It sounds like you're talking about something like https://jsonapi.org/ https://jsonapi.org/, specifically the sparse field sets https://jsonapi.org/format/#fet

It sounds like you're talking about something like https://jsonapi.org/ https://jsonapi.org/, specifically the sparse field sets https://jsonapi.org/format/#fetching-sparse-fieldsets https://jsonapi.org/format/#fetching-sparse-fieldsets It feels like it has some similar goals to GraphQL by offering the client more control over the data returned, but not at the cost of potential performance problems.