Solid advice. One thing that helped me level up with API docs: don't just read them — test them immediately. Open a terminal, make the curl request, and see what the actual response looks like. The docs tell you the schema; the real response tells you the edge cases.
Also, AI tools have completely changed how I approach unfamiliar APIs. I'll paste the docs into Claude Code and say "write me integration tests for these 3 endpoints." The tests become my living documentation — they show me exactly how the API behaves, including error cases the docs don't mention.
The meta-skill isn't reading docs faster. It's building a feedback loop where you read → test → verify → repeat until the API clicks.