Use these baseline practices before shipping.

Security

• Never store API keys in frontend code or public repositories.
• Keep secrets in environment variables or a secure secret manager.
• Rotate keys regularly and revoke unused credentials.

API design

• Keep endpoint naming consistent and predictable.
• Validate request payloads and return stable response shapes.
• Use clear error codes and actionable error messages.

Reliability

• Add logging for each request path and failure mode.
• Use retries with backoff for external API calls.
• Add timeouts to prevent hanging requests.

Performance

• Cache safe, repeated reads where possible.
• Paginate large responses.
• Monitor latency and error rate for each route.

Team workflow

• Review API changes before merge.
• Keep docs updated with every endpoint change.
• Use staging before production deployments.