Hey HN! Aldin here, a helping hand to Voiden (https://voiden.md)
Voiden is a free, offline, Git-native API client. Your API definitions, docs, and tests all live together.
It came out of years of frustration: cloud sync lock-in, paywalled basics, bloated UIs, and lag on even simple requests. So the team built the opposite: an offline tool with no login, no telemetry, no lock-in. Just markdown and hotkeys.
It behaves like code: local files, git branches, no cloud nonsense. Terminal is built-in, so you can commit, diff, and push changes right from the app.
Docs stay close to your requests, so that API spec and what the API actually does never drift apart. No more scattered Postman, docs, and test files everywhere. A single source of truth.
A minimalist GET request looks something like this:
GET
https://dummyjson.com/posts
Not OSS (yet), but 100% local and free. Optional plugins will be coming down the line, but the core stays free.
We'd love feedback from folks tired of overcomplicated and bloated API tooling.
Looks to be similar to Hurl https://hurl.dev/ https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl Apache-2.0
Not sure, it's hard to parse your website. Too many empty taglines like "docs that do more" and "git-native", and the 5px font in your screenshots does not help. This screams "no programmers only designers here". Honestly it's a red flag for a programming tool.
> Not OSS (yet)
Does the "yet" infer that you do intend to open source the baseline product, and then have paid plugins?
This seems like a really good idea. I like that it's just markdown files and how seemless it is with an existing project. I have a few minor suggestions
1. I would really like a way to run the endpoint by clicking something in addition to command+enter (it wasn't obvious that I could open the sidebar and then click play but I see that now)
2. It would be good to include the evaluated request body and headers in the result sidebar
3. Duplicate file in the file tree context menu - I saw it in the tab context menu but that seems unintuitive
4. Maybe allow the user to set variables inside the markdown that can be imported to other files, for example a customerId variable that different requests could use which isn't part of the environment
5. Dragging text around appears like it will be moved but when releasing the mouse nothing happens
And finally 1 question I have: is this using an underlying text editor? It looks pretty robust but it doesn't look like VSCode, maybe something else? I am wondering if it's available to use for my own project
It seems really neat, but it's unclear what problem you're solving.
Is the goal of the project to let people write documentation for APIs, explore APIs, or something else?
Here are a few suggestions:
1. Start with a clear story of why you built this. Not lock in etc, but what were you or your team trying to do? That will help me understand whether I too try to do this thing.
2. Now you can tell me about all your frustrations, and I as a fellow misery drenched individual will say "Yes! I too have suffered the lack of cloud sync lock-in!"
3. Let me see it! Is there a way to embed the actual editor in the browser? Barring that putting a heading over the video, or a caption telling us what you're doing. When I click around to explore, let me click on those screenshots so I can see what you've built.
All in all, this looks really neat, but the challenge with building something divergent is that you need to invest more effort in telling the story.
As the creator of another free/offline/git-native API client Yaak (https://yaak.app) I just want to say this looks awesome!
It's refreshing to see a new API client that isn't just a reimplementation of Postman's interface.
I mean this nicely, I don't really feel like anything on the landing page besides one paragraph is actually helpful to readers understanding what problem you're trying to solve.
I think it'd be useful to focus on this more:
> Voiden turns your API definitions and docs into dynamic, purpose-built interfaces — no fixed UI, no rigid templates. Everything is composed in one place and rendered down to Markdown, tailored to the API it serves.
One thing I miss the most when writing Markdown is this formula experience you get in Excel. Jot something down, get the result. Then link it to another block.
There are tools like Jupyter notebooks that have all the functionalities, but their file format isn't very readable or diffable using standard terminal tools.
A while back I wrote https://github.com/zimbatm/mdsh to explore the space. Voiden.md looks like a fancier version of that.
This looks pretty exciting, the documentation aspect of api-client-in-md has potential!
When do you think you'll have a linux client available? I'm hoping it will be available via flatpak :)
Is there any way to subscribe to be notified when the Linux package becomes available?
I'm curious to give this a spin and see how it compares against Bruno (https://www.usebruno.com) --> not affiliated
Ohhh this is something I've been looking for a while, given how broken the UX of some competitors in the space is
Setup executable is pretty big, is it an Electron app?
What do you mean by offline? Don't we need to be online if we need to make an API call?
This actually looks great. Can't wait to try it out when I get home.
Something I was looking for.
Is the app itself not FOSS?
if its offline, how do you clone a repo? :thinking:
This looks great. Regarding the taglines and copy being confusing for some, I understood it, but I have some suggestions:
Instead of saying what it is, say what it does (for the user). For example instead of 'Offline-first API Client'..., try "Document your API, test it, and version it using Git 100% locally and free in a modern GUI. Voiden even includes a terminal so you can execute any command or custom workflow without ever leaving the app. (OSS release coming soon)". Remember, show, dontt tell.