Tagging System REST API

Design a tagging system with REST APIs for creating tags, associating tags to resources, deleting tags, and finding tagged objects. Interviewers focus on API design details and edge cases more than broad architecture diagrams. Requirements Support creating tags. Support associating and disassociating tags with resources. Support deleting tags and defining what happens to existing associations. Support finding resources by tag and finding tags for a resource. Define REST APIs, request/response shapes, and error cases. Cover pagination for large result sets. Notes Candidates repeatedly describe this round as API-design heavy; the interviewer may drill every operation before there is time for a full system diagram. Be explicit about uniqueness, case sensitivity, tag rename semantics, and authorization boundaries. Preparation Write endpoints and schemas for tag CRUD plus association CRUD. Practice pagination, idempotency, and delete behavior for both hard-delete and soft-delete policies.