API Design Patterns for Cloudflare Workers: Minimal, Secure, Fast
I've built APIs on every platform—traditional servers, Lambda, containers. But Cloudflare Workers fundamentally changed how I think about API design. Not because they're faster (they are), but because every millisecond saved at the edge compounds across millions of requests, and your infrastructure bill actually reflects that.
The problem: most API guidance assumes you're running a traditional backend. Cloudflare Workers demand a different mindset. You're not optimizing for throughput in a data center—you're optimizing for response time measured in tens of milliseconds, from a location physically closest to your user. That changes everything about how you validate, authenticate, and respond.
Why Edge-First Matters
Latency isn't just a performance metric. It's a reliability and cost metric.
