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nikolasdimi

@ nikolasdimi @lemmy.world

Posts
7
Comments
54
Joined
6 mo. ago

  • Modern API tools

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  • this is the "joke". that every API client calls themseleves modern without this essentially meaning much.

    and certainly not, I dont mean Postman. But this is the easy answer. What I also mean is that many of the tools that came as a response to Postman being "old fashioned" are basically mimicking the same things or principles with a few things here and there.

    so everything is like "postman but with a better XYZ feature" or "Postman but open source"...

  • When the Category Leader Stalls : Postman and the Future of API Tooling

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  • what about people that are not JS?

  • When the Category Leader Stalls : Postman and the Future of API Tooling

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  • You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain?

  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • Apologies...missed that. Yeah this is what we are currently working on - part of the next release actually :)

  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • I actually agree with most of your premise.

    Voiden is not coming from “people are too scared of the terminal, let’s save them with buttons.” It comes from almost the opposite direction. A lot of us are terminal people too. The problem is not that curl, hurl, scripts, OpenAPI, or plain code are bad. The problem is that API work tends to get fragmented across too many places once it becomes real.

    You have raw requests in one place, auth logic in another, docs somewhere else, examples in Slack, test cases somewhere else again, and then different teams consuming different versions of what is supposedly the same API. That’s the mess we care about.

    So the goal with Voiden is not to replace power-user workflows but to give them a better structure, while also making that same source of truth usable by the rest of the team, including people who are not living in the terminal all day, or simply have different preferences.

    That is also why composability matters so much to us. Reusable headers, auth, query params, payload fragments, shared blocks, documentation alongside execution , not because curl cannot do requests, but mainly because nobody wants to maintain the same slightly different request 100 times across scripts, docs, and collections.

    And on the “UI tools become dead ends” point: yes, that is the trap we are trying to avoid. We do not want a bespoke black-box UI where if there is no button, you are stuck. The idea is to have one source of truth that can still work for power users, can be versioned in Git, can be shared, can be documented properly, and can evolve into automation/CLI/agent workflows as well.

    So from my side it is not “UI versus terminal.” That debate is honestly a bit too small. What if we reframe this to: "Can we have one composable, reviewable, reusable representation of API work that serves both the terminal-native people and the wider team without duplicating everything across five tools?"

    That is basically the whole bet.

    So yeah, I get the skepticism. I have it too. The world does not need another glossy “API client” that turns into a toy the moment you step outside the happy path.

    The point of Voiden is precisely to avoid that fate. I am sure you will see how radically different Voiden's take is, if you just give it a spin for a few mins. In a world full of postman clones - we want Voiden to really stand out with a different approach to api tooling. :)

  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • yes :) welcome to try

  • TIL that Rudyard Kipling (writer of the jungle book) wrote a poem called "IF". A few lines of this poem are highlighted in the entrance of Wimbledon's Centre Court.

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  • what if I tell you this was not intentional? I just realized this. But I can pretend this was done on purpose as a joke.

  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • awesome

  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • hey, nikolas here (part of the team of Voiden)- I am keen to understand more if you dont mind. Which of the preferences you mentioned discounts this project? the version control and lightweight?

    I guess you are you referring to the tool being on Electron (Since the version control is handled through the native git integration)?

    We used electron cause allows to deliver the same experience across Windows, macOS, and Linux, and makes it easier to iterate quickly in these early stages.

    a few points:

    • Some apps do feel heavy because of how they are structured : monolithic cores, always-on cloud layers, or unnecessary background services. Voiden is (intentionally) built with a lightweight core: offline-first, Git-native, and without extra baggage.
    • Voiden uses a plugin architecture. This means that we have a small core and all the extra functionality is optional (users can enable or disable plugins) so the base app stays small while the ecosystem can grow. Community contributions or advanced features don’t inflate the core, they live in plugins that users opt into.

    At the same time, there is no special tie to Electron :) We evaluated other options as well but we felt they didn’t offer the same support for all the features we wanted to deliver.

    But we intentionally designed the plugin SDK to be framework-agnostic, leaving the door open to switch the core to a different framework in the future if it makes sense.The goal is a tool that stays lean, extensible, and adaptable as it evolves.

    apologies for the long answer - hope it makes sense?

  • Voiden - A Markdown based Open Source Alternative to Postman

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  • yap, I think the plain text all the way from design, tests and docs is powerful. Looking forward to any thoughts you might have when you try.

  • TIL that Rudyard Kipling (writer of the jungle book) wrote a poem called "IF". A few lines of this poem are highlighted in the entrance of Wimbledon's Centre Court.

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  • yes, I heard and read about his racist and sexist stories as well. agree.

  • Postman Strikes Again

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  • yes it can. you can use voiden.md as well - also open source, plain text, markdown all the way and also keeps collaboration in git.

  • Postman Strikes Again

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  • collaboration is already happening on git - so API clients that allow this are a good solution: voiden.md, yaak and others are doing this as well.