API Design Patterns

The Contract You're Signing#

Stripe built a payments empire on six words: /v1/charges, /v1/customers, /v1/subscriptions. That resource model isn't aesthetic preference. Every endpoint encodes a data ownership boundary, a failure contract, and a versioning commitment that thousands of companies now depend on. When you write POST /createURL instead of POST /urls, you're not just violating a naming convention. You're telling the interviewer you think in procedures, not resources, and that signal travels fast.