XAPI

Context

XAPI is a long-running developer product focused on live Xbox profile, achievements, game, and presence data. I founded it and continue to run product, engineering, and operations end-to-end.

What I did

• Built and operated a subscription API product serving a global developer audience.
• Architected and maintained a Laravel backend with Redis caching, rate limiting, OAuth authentication, webhooks, and detailed API documentation.
• Owned infrastructure and delivery across Digital Ocean, Laravel Forge, AWS (SES/S3), and Stripe billing.
• Evolved the codebase from earlier plain PHP implementations to Laravel-centered architecture over multiple product eras.
• Shipped features from community feedback while balancing reliability, abuse prevention, and commercial sustainability.

Outcomes

• Sustained 99.9%+ uptime under fluctuating demand.
• Maintained a durable, community-driven product over more than a decade.
• Established a mature API platform with clear docs, predictable limits, and stable operational practices.

Technical notes

• API auth uses bearer tokens, with documented flows for stale Xbox session refresh.
• Pagination supports continuation-token workflows where upstream services expose them.
• Team plan requests can target linked accounts with the x-account header.
• Rate-limit behavior is explicit through response headers and 429 responses.
• Localization is supported through Accept-Language.

Challenges

• Managing abuse, traffic spikes, and billing edge cases in a public API environment.
• Designing around upstream constraints from Xbox Live services.
• Keeping architecture and docs coherent across long product lifecycles.

Learnings

Running XAPI reinforced that developer trust comes from reliability, honest operational messaging, clear documentation, and stable commercial rules as much as pure technical execution.