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@jaredmorgenstern jaredmorgenstern commented Jan 21, 2026

Summary

Add a mandatory step to the brainstorming skill that validates external APIs, OAuth scopes, and third-party services for deprecation before recommending them in designs.

Problem

Without validation, developers can spend hours debugging issues with deprecated APIs. For example:

  • Google Photos Library API: The photoslibrary and photoslibrary.readonly scopes were deprecated in March 2025
  • A developer following the brainstorming process to design a photo-based app could waste hours debugging OAuth "insufficient scopes" errors, only to discover the API was sunset

Solution

Add a "Validating external dependencies" step that:

  1. Searches for deprecation/sunset notices before recommending any external API
  2. Checks official documentation for scope changes, auth changes, or deprecation banners
  3. Reports findings to the user before finalizing the design

Also adds "Validate external APIs" to the Key Principles section.

Changes

  • skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md: Added validation step and principle

Why This Matters

5 minutes of validation saves hours of debugging dead APIs.


🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

  • Documentation
    • Enhanced brainstorming guidance with a mandatory section on validating external dependencies, including deprecation checks and documentation reviews.
    • Added principle to validate external APIs before recommending third-party services.

✏️ Tip: You can customize this high-level summary in your review settings.

Add a step to validate external APIs, OAuth scopes, and third-party
services for deprecation before recommending them in designs.

This prevents wasted development time on deprecated APIs. For example,
Google Photos Library API scopes were deprecated in March 2025, and
without this validation step, developers can spend hours debugging
OAuth issues only to discover the API is no longer available.

The validation step:
1. Searches for deprecation/sunset notices
2. Checks official documentation for changes
3. Reports findings before finalizing design

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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coderabbitai bot commented Jan 21, 2026

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Documentation updates to brainstorming skill guidance adding a mandatory validation section for external dependencies and a new key principle requiring API deprecation checks before recommending third-party services.

Changes

Cohort / File(s) Summary
Documentation Update
skills/brainstorming/SKILL.md
Added mandatory "Validating external dependencies" section under "Exploring approaches" with steps to check deprecation notices and verify official documentation; added new key principle requiring API validation before recommending third-party services

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~8 minutes

Poem

🐰 A hop through the docs, a careful review,
Check if your APIs are shiny and new!
No deprecated paths shall we boldly explore,
Just validated wisdom forevermore!

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3
✅ Passed checks (3 passed)
Check name Status Explanation
Description Check ✅ Passed Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check ✅ Passed The title clearly and concisely summarizes the primary change: adding a mandatory API validation step to the brainstorming skill documentation.
Docstring Coverage ✅ Passed No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.


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