API Change Risk Starter

The problem

Changing an API contract without a rigorous impact assessment often leads to broken clients, failed rollouts, and emergency rollbacks. Developers frequently lack a structured way to screen for compatibility risks before code is written.

What it does

• Analyzes diffs between old and new API contracts to identify breaking changes.
• Maps the impact across producers, servers, and known client integrations.
• Screens for specific risks in retry logic, message ordering, and observability.
• Identifies gaps in rollout and rollback plans before implementation begins.
• Provides a structured diagnostic report with pre-implementation gates.

Why this beats prompting it yourself

This skill enforces a strict diagnostic workflow that prevents common oversight, such as assuming server-side tests prove client compatibility. It maintains a clear boundary between supplied facts and hypotheses, ensuring you don't mistake assumptions for verified evidence.

Use cases

• Screening GraphQL schema changes for nullability or enum evolution risks.
• Evaluating the impact of changing webhook signatures or payload structures.
• Planning the deprecation window for legacy API versions with coexisting clients.
• Assessing pagination or rate limit changes for potential integration failures.

Known limitations

This skill performs no external actions or code execution. It relies entirely on sanitized material provided by the user and cannot discover unknown consumers or verify real-world telemetry.