Show HN: Open-source Postman alternative with type safety

Hello! This is Jeane and Samuel and we’re building RecipeUI. RecipeUI is an open source Postman alternative that uses TypeScript to statically type and autocomplete requests.

We built this because current API tools don’t deal with the fact that some APIs are just painful to work with. For us, it’s usually error after error as we try to figure out how to properly form the first request.

We recorded a demo to show you how TypeScript helps us autocomplete a request correctly. https://youtu.be/O_Mly_p-g5s

How does our platform improve the developer experience? The analogy is similar to using a statically typed language vs dynamically typed. Most API tools are dynamically typed. You’re guessing the params and relying on the request to magically work at runtime, only for you to go back to stack overflow or the docs when it doesn’t.

We take the approach of defining parameters and the schema first. When you add a new parameter, you need to mention upfront if it’s required and what type it is (integer, string, boolean). While this can be painful in the beginning, it will save you and anyone you share this with the hassle of understanding how this API works.

Our app is cross-platform on web and desktop. Our desktop app is I built the first version of this at Robinhood when my colleagues were sharing bash scripts and internal APIs on slack to test things. I wanted to make it easier for anyone to use an API quickly and made use of our OpenAPI specs to generate a nice autocomplete API tool. Soon after, the Options team, then the Crypto team, and then the whole eng org at Robinhood adopted this tool!

Try it out at recipeui.com! Please star us on GitHub if you like the product https://github.com/RecipeUI/RecipeUI.

Show HN: Open-source Postman alternative with type safety
recipeui.com

Getting rid of electron was the best thing.

We're thinking of a way to sync this with git or some link to a schema somewhere (e.g an OpenAPI yaml spec).

For now, you'll have to manually write the TypeScript interfaces but we'll support sharing APIs soon!

That import via curl was awesome! Something not hard to do by hand but such a time saver.

I'm going to check this out!

It seems postman has put collections behind a paywall so timing for this is great. Does ReceipeUI manage secrets or have some suggestions to deal with this to avoid things leaking into shared cloud storage?