Axum

This is your reference for building production Rust HTTP APIs with Axum. It covers the essentials: typed extractors for request parsing, Tower middleware composition for timeouts and tracing, shared state management with Arc, structured error handling via IntoResponse, and graceful shutdown patterns. The testing section shows you how to test routers without spinning up actual sockets using tower::ServiceExt. If you're choosing between Rust web frameworks, this makes the case for Axum's strengths: excellent type safety at request boundaries and composable middleware. Watch out for the anti-patterns section on blocking the async runtime, it's an easy mistake that tanks performance.

skills.sh installs: 500
GitHub stars: 79
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

View on GitHub

Install

$ npx -y skills add bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills --skill axum --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Axum (Rust) - Production Web APIs

Overview

Axum is a Rust web framework built on Hyper and Tower. Use it for type-safe request handling with composable middleware, structured errors, and excellent testability.

Quick Start

Minimal server

✅ Correct: typed handler + JSON response

use axum::{routing::get, Json, Router};
use serde::Serialize;
use std::net::SocketAddr;

#[derive(Serialize)]
struct Health {
    status: &'static str,
}

async fn health() -> Json<Health> {
    Json(Health { status: "ok" })
}

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let app = Router::new().route("/health", get(health));

    let addr: SocketAddr = "0.0.0.0:3000".parse().unwrap();
    let listener = tokio::net::TcpListener::bind(addr).await.unwrap();
    axum::serve(listener, app).await.unwrap();
}

❌ Wrong: block the async runtime

async fn handler() {
    std::thread::sleep(std::time::Duration::from_secs(1)); // blocks executor
}

Core Concepts

Router + handlers

Handlers are async functions that return something implementing IntoResponse.

✅ Correct: route nesting

use axum::{routing::get, Router};

SKILL.md on GitHub

Details

Repository: github.com/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills
Categories: Backend & APIs, Testing & QA, Debugging, Rust
First seen: Jun 3, 2026