Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, the project handles API routes individually, but there is no centralized middleware layer for applying common security checks.

This results in duplicated authentication logic, inconsistent error handling, missing security headers, and makes it difficult to apply rate limiting across protected routes. As the project grows, maintaining these checks in every route becomes harder and increases the risk of security issues.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to introduce a centralized and reusable middleware layer that executes before protected routes.

The middleware should:

• Validate authentication for protected endpoints.
• Apply configurable rate limiting.
• Add common security headers to responses.
• Return consistent HTTP status codes for unauthorized requests.
• Be configurable so different route groups can enable or disable specific middleware when required.

Describe alternatives you've considered

An alternative is to continue implementing authentication, rate limiting, and security checks individually inside each route handler.

However, this approach duplicates code, makes maintenance difficult, and can lead to inconsistent behavior across endpoints. A centralized middleware provides a cleaner, more scalable solution.