You've built the endpoints, wired up the controllers, and the happy path works. Then someone hammers your API with 10,000 requests in a minute, a client ships a breaking change to mobile users on v1, and a rogue token gives third-party access to everything it shouldn't. This is where most "RESTful API" tutorials stop — and where real API design begins.
This article goes beyond the basics. We'll cover Laravel Sanctum token scopes, building genuinely useful rate limiting that doesn't punish legitimate users, and a versioning strategy that scales without turning your routes file into spaghetti.
Authentication with Laravel Sanctum: Scopes and Token Abilities
Sanctum is the right tool for most Laravel APIs — it's lightweight, integrates with your existing users table, and supports both SPA cookie auth and token-based auth. But most implementations ignore token abilities entirely.
Creating Tokens with Abilities
