An automated development skill that reviews API diffs for compatibility, security, and schema evolution, classifying changes as additive, behavior-changing, or breaking.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install api-change-review
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install api-change-review using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is API Change Review?
The API Change Review skill is a local-first engineering assistant designed to automatically analyze and classify modifications to your API contracts. Integrating seamlessly with your development workflow, this tool reviews code diffs or API specs for validation rules, authentication requirements, error shapes, idempotency, and observability. By analyzing these critical integration points, it ensures your updates remain backward-compatible while suggesting minimal safe changes.
As part of the broader ecosystem of Openclaw Skills, this tool operates completely locally and requires no external connections to run. It empowers developers and AI agents to evaluate changes before merging, reducing the risk of broken client applications, deployment failures, and unhandled regression bugs.
API Change Review Use Cases
- Classifying code changes or pull request diffs as additive, behavior-changing, or breaking to prevent unexpected service disruptions.
- Verifying backward compatibility during major API refactoring or microservice migrations.
- Automatically generating structured migration guides, minimal test plans, and rollout notes for API updates.
- Capturing tribal knowledge and API design conventions in durable, shareable Open Knowledge Format (OKF) notes.
How API Change Review Works
- Identify Contract Surface: The skill scans request/response schemas, authentication layers, error payloads, and side effects.
- Classify Changes: It classifies the API modification into one of four states: additive, behavior-changing, breaking, or ambiguous.
- Assess Risks: The agent evaluates authorization, tenant boundaries, validation rules, idempotency, and observability metrics.
- Formulate Migration Plan: A safe rollout plan and minimal contract changes are drafted to avoid speculative versioning.
- Define Verification: The tool outlines a testing strategy containing unit, contract, and integration test requirements.
- Knowledge Capture (Optional): If new conventions or rules are discovered, the skill offers to save them as an Open Knowledge Format (OKF) file under the
knowledge/engineering/directory.
API Change Review Setup
This standalone tool works entirely locally without any mandatory external setup. To run this as part of your directory of Openclaw Skills, invoke your local AI coding agent with the appropriate system prompts or context.
To enable optional advanced team alignment, workspace discovery, and structured recommendations, upgrade using the Ritual CLI:
npm install -g @ritualai/cli
ritual init
ritual status
API Change Review Data Schema & Taxonomy
The API Change Review skill outputs structured analysis and can optionally generate Open Knowledge Format (OKF) markdown files to store conventions:
| Output Element | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Text Status | Safe / Risky / Breaking / Unclear |
| Review Notes | Markdown Report | Detailed review of auth, validation, idempotency, and observability |
| Migration Plan | Markdown List | Rollout instructions and client migration guides |
| OKF Note | YAML + Markdown | Knowledge file saved as knowledge/engineering/<slug>.md if approved |
Open Knowledge Format (OKF) Metadata Schema:
type: API Convention
title: <One-line title>
description: <Summary of convention learned>
resource: <Path to file-or-evidence>
tags: [<tag1>, <tag2>]
timestamp: <ISO 8601 Timestamp>
API Change Review Advanced Features
- Durable OKF Knowledge Capture: Seamlessly flags engineering decisions and stores them as portable, versionable markdown files with structured YAML frontmatter.
- Zero-Dependency Execution: Works completely locally without external network requests, ideal for secure, self-hosted developer workspaces.
- Ritual Cloud Integration: Optionally upgrade your local agent context to discover multi-client dependencies, analyze historical production incidents, and reach cross-team alignment on breaking API migrations.
SKILL.md
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