Glossary
A development approach where an application's API is designed and built before the user-facing interface, treating the API itself as the primary product every client — web, mobile, partner integration — consumes equally.
Why It Matters
When an API is an afterthought bolted onto an existing web application, it usually reflects that application's internal assumptions rather than a clean, general-purpose interface — making every new client (a mobile app, a partner integration) harder to build than it should be. API-first design means every new surface plugs into the same well-designed interface from day one.
This is part of our Digital Platforms capability — the architecture that lets one platform serve every user type a business has, instead of a separate codebase per department.
See the full Digital Platforms capabilityDoes API-first mean building an API before knowing what the product does?
No — it means designing the API contract as a first-class product decision alongside the user experience, not designing the UI first and reverse-engineering an API from it afterward.
Is this only relevant for platforms with external partner integrations?
No — even a single-client application benefits, since an API-first design keeps the front end and back end cleanly separated, making future changes — a redesign, a new mobile app, a partner integration — far less disruptive.