Defines resources or events, request and response semantics, errors, compatibility, boundaries, and usage examples for GraphQL. It fixes adoption boundaries and observable failure evidence while keeping environment-specific limits configurable.
Package status: reference context ready for human review. The contract and test scenarios are complete, but no claim is made that an adopting implementation has passed them.
Decision
For GraphQL, adopt a versioned wire contract at the service boundary. Expose a resource or event contract with stable identity, authorization, validation, idempotency, compatibility, and explicit errors. This api block focuses specifically on specification. This package is a reference contract: the adopting team must choose numeric limits, providers, jurisdictions, and operational owners from evidence in its own environment.
Scope
- The GraphQL actors, inputs, outputs, states, policy or schema versions, and externally visible outcomes required for the specification focus of this api block.
- Primary and alternate interfaces, background work, caches, integrations, support paths, and evidence that can exercise the same boundary.
- Adoption-specific configuration, rollout, recovery, and verification responsibilities needed to apply the reference safely.
Outside this block
- Choosing a universal vendor, framework, jurisdiction, numeric threshold, retention period, or service-level objective for every adopter.
- Claiming that packaged scenarios have run against a downstream implementation or that this reference grants legal, security, or accessibility certification.
Contract
- Define request, response, error, pagination or event semantics independently of one client implementation.
- Authenticate the caller and authorize the resource and action on the server before returning data or accepting work.
- Use explicit timeouts, bounded retries with jitter, and a terminal outcome; do not retry non-idempotent effects blindly.
- Carry a correlation identifier through the integration while excluding credentials and sensitive payloads from telemetry.
- Document method or event semantics, required fields, conditional behavior, limits, and a machine-readable error vocabulary.
- Reject unknown security-sensitive fields and preserve forward compatibility for explicitly extensible data.
- Authorize at object and field resolution, not only at the top-level operation; loaders and caches include tenant and policy context.
- Validate documents, variables, depth or cost, list bounds, and batching before execution, and return GraphQL-compliant error locations without secrets.
- For the specification variant, enforce this declared boundary: defines resources or events, request and response semantics, errors, compatibility, boundaries, and usage examples for graphql.
Implementation guidance
- Publish contract fixtures and consumer tests before routing production traffic to a new version.
- Model GraphQL inputs, outputs, actors, states, invariants, side effects, and evidence before selecting framework or vendor details.
- Store the applicable GraphQL contract or policy version with material state so migrations, replay, and support decisions remain attributable.
- Introduce the path behind controlled rollout, compare expected and observed outcomes, and keep a tested recovery route until adoption evidence is complete.
Failure handling and safeguards
- Dependency failure maps to a stable error or fallback state; ambiguous side effects are reconciled before another attempt.
- Invalid or contradictory GraphQL state is rejected or quarantined; the implementation never guesses a value that broadens authority or duplicates an effect.
- Retries are bounded and use durable identity; after exhaustion, work reaches an inspectable terminal state with an accountable owner.
Verification and operations
- Test retries, duplicate requests, conditional updates, pagination or resumption, invalid credentials, limits, and dependency timeout.
- Monitor GraphQL success, denial, validation failure, dependency failure, retry exhaustion, and recovery by contract version without sensitive payload dimensions.
- Re-run paired positive and negative fixtures after policy, schema, dependency, migration, or boundary changes and preserve the resulting evidence.
Adoption assumptions
- Names and values in the example are a concrete fixture, not universal defaults; adopters replace them through documented evidence and ownership.
- The adopting system can provide authenticated identity, durable operation or record versions, bounded telemetry, and a controlled path for change.
The executable-looking examples in this package are fixtures and acceptance contracts. Run the collection validator to check structure and metadata, then translate and execute the scenarios in the target repository before recording implementation evidence.
References
- RFC 9110, HTTP Semantics
- GraphQL Specification, September 2025 (applies as of 2026-09-08)