Ask Claude to Add Rate Limiting to Your API

Rate limiting is one of those things everyone knows they should do and nobody enjoys configuring by hand. Claude can analyse your API routes and propose a complete throttling strategy.

cat routes/api.php | claude "Add appropriate rate limiting to these routes. Authentication endpoints should be stricter than read endpoints. Use named rate limiters defined in RouteServiceProvider and explain your reasoning."

Claude will define named limiters in RateLimiter::for() blocks and apply them per route group — not just slap a generic throttle:60,1 on everything.

// In RouteServiceProvider
RateLimiter::for('login', function (Request $request) {
    return Limit::perMinute(5)->by($request->ip());
});

RateLimiter::for('api', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user()
        ? Limit::perMinute(120)->by($request->user()->id)
        : Limit::perMinute(30)->by($request->ip());
});

You can push further: ask Claude to add custom throttle response messages, different limits per user plan, or exponential backoff headers.

Turn rate limiting from an afterthought into a deliberate security layer.