1. Overview

Address the "why"

“Startups fail when they are not solving a market problem. We were not solving a large enough problem that we could universally serve with a scalable solution. We had great technology, great data on shopping behavior, great reputation as a thought leader, great expertise, great advisors, etc, but what we didn’t have was technology or business model that solved a pain point in a scalable way.” — Treehouse Logic, The Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail

2. Getting started

Run in Postman

Compare with Hello World tutorials

TTHW = "Time to hello world"

3. Authorization and authentication

API Key

HMAC

OAuth

6. Code samples and tutorials

Cover common scenarios

While a developer’s guide should walk a developer through the basic usage of an API and its functionality, it can’t cover every possible use of that API in a coherent way. That is where articles and tutorials come in, to teach developers tangential or specialized uses of an API, like combining it with another service, framework, or API. —The Six Pillars of Complete Developer Documentation

9. Best practices

Sample best practice topics

pagination, time ranges, fault tolerance, cache values, connectivity, timeouts, downtime, SSL, versions, testing and validation, exports, languages, number handling, expanding resources, notifications, etc.