Writing API guidelines is a best practice for standardizing APIs produced by thousands of service provider, but what happens when those rules are not backed by internet standards? This talk proposes an iterative strategy for identify and standardize inside IETF key features of your API guidelines. The steps includes feature landscaping, stakeholder identification and engagement, prototyping and writing an actual internet-draft. The strategy is shown using two examples: - rewriting of `Digest` header RFC3230 adding clarifications useful for implementors; - proposing new `RateLimit` headers and engage with implementors (Microsoft, Red Hat, Kong, ..).