interfacecentric

Interfacecentric is a software engineering approach that treats interfaces between components as the primary design artifact. In an interfacecentric design, explicit interfaces, contracts, and API surfaces are defined and stabilized early, and implementations are chosen or evolved to satisfy those interfaces. The goal is to maximize decoupling, substitutability, and reuse by making components depend on well-defined abstractions rather than concrete implementations.

Key ideas include contract-first design, explicit interface definitions, versioning and compatibility strategies, and contract testing. Interfaces serve as the boundary that shapes development and integration, while implementation details remain hidden behind the interface.

This approach is common in API-driven development, microservices, plugin architectures, and component-based systems. It supports parallel work, easier testing, and ability to swap implementations without affecting clients, provided the contract remains compatible.

Benefits include improved modularity, resilience to change, and clearer responsibility. Potential drawbacks are upfront design costs, risk of over-abstraction, and churn if interfaces are not well managed or too finely grained.

Related concepts include API-first design, contract testing, consumer-driven contracts, and the dependency inversion principle. While sometimes associated with user interface design, interfacecentric in software engineering focuses on programmatic boundaries between components rather than graphical user interfaces.