specification: API Commons Rate Limits
specificationVersion: '0.1'
schema: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/interface-research/main/schema/api-commons.yml#/$defs/RateLimits
provider: Dronecode Foundation
providerId: dronecode
generated: '2026-09-06'
method: probed
source: >-
  The 39 verbatim MAVSDK protobuf contracts under grpc/ (no quota or throttle field in any of them),
  plus a live unauthenticated request to https://dronecode.org/wp-json/ on 2026-09-06 with the full
  response headers inspected.
created: '2026-05-04'
modified: '2026-09-06'
supersedes: >-
  The 2026-05-04 bulk-sweep scaffold that previously occupied this file. It declared
  X-RateLimit-Limit / X-RateLimit-Remaining / X-RateLimit-Reset / RateLimit-Policy headers, a 429
  throttle response and a 10 req/min free-tier limit. Dronecode returns none of those headers and
  publishes no limits; every value in that file was invented. Replaced with the probed result.
tags:
  - Drones
  - Linux Foundation
  - Robotics
  - UAV
  - Rate Limiting
description: >-
  Dronecode publishes no API rate limits, and on its one HTTP surface it emits no rate-limit headers.
  This is an honest zero rather than an undocumented policy: the MAVSDK gRPC server runs on the
  consumer's own hardware, so there is no shared resource for the Foundation to meter.
limit_count: 0
headers: {}
headers_observed: []
responseCodes: {}
limits: []
surfaces:
  - api: MAVSDK gRPC API
    published_limits: false
    signalling: none
    detail: >-
      No quota, throttle, burst, concurrency cap or backoff hint appears in any of the 387 RPCs. The
      real constraints are physical and configured by the operator, not by the Foundation: the
      vehicle's MAVLink link bandwidth (typically a 57.6 kbps telemetry radio or a WiFi/LTE companion
      link) and the per-message stream rates the autopilot is configured to emit. An agent should
      treat telemetry Subscribe* streams as rate-shaped by the link, and should not assume any
      server-side protection against flooding the vehicle with setpoints.
    exhaustion_behaviour: >-
      Not a 429. Overrunning the link shows up as RESULT_TIMEOUT (defined by 27 of the 36 services) or
      RESULT_CONNECTION_ERROR (20 services) — the same codes a genuinely lost vehicle produces, so a
      client cannot distinguish congestion from disconnection.
  - api: dronecode.org WordPress REST API
    published_limits: false
    signalling: none
    probe:
      url: https://dronecode.org/wp-json/
      status: 200
      rate_limit_headers: []
      note: >-
        Response carries only `server: nginx` and an `x-cache` chain. No X-RateLimit-*, no
        RateLimit-*, no Retry-After. Any protection in front of it is invisible to the caller.
gaps:
  - >-
    RESULT_TIMEOUT and RESULT_CONNECTION_ERROR are overloaded — they mean "the link is saturated",
    "the vehicle went away" and "the request was lost" with no way to tell them apart, and no
    retry-after hint. That is the closest thing to a rate-limit signal the contract has.