Deleted _apis.html.erb as it is redundant and unused as a result of the switch to a single API page.
Removed 'spork' from the gem file, uninstalled spork via 'gem uninstall spork' then ran bundle install knowing that bundler would reinstall spork as a dependency for guard-spork.
Moved Capybara::DSL include down from global to rspec.configure block after noticing it in Starkers' post.
Moved fill_in lines to the before block after reading Steve's response to Starkers' post. This explains why the sign_in code would fire properly while the fill_in outside of the before blocks would not. sign_in was always used inside an before block. This is consistent with user_pages_spec in sample_app. Why didn't I notice this sooner?
Factories still weren't working. In an attempt to diagnose I moved a FactoryGirl.create(:api, user: user) line to within a before block. This caused a spectacular failure explaining that the type column is a reserved word and thus cannot be written to. This was validated by forcing a write to the type column in the rails console and receiving the same error via the browser when attempting to render the API. The column must be renamed.
Migrated apis 'type' column to 'entity'. Then updated the databases, restarted the rails server, updated the sepcs, api model, and api factories to match the new column. FactoryGirl.create(:api, user: user) now works. Not sure about corporation keys yet.