berbicanes/apiark

Privacy-first API platform built with Tauri v2. No login, no cloud, ~60 MB RAM. A lightweight Postman alternative.

Summary

ApiArk is an open-source desktop API client built with Tauri v2 (Rust backend plus a native webview) that stores every request as a plain YAML file on disk. It is positioned as a privacy-first, offline alternative to Postman, supporting REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, SSE, MQTT, and Socket.IO from a single app. The project is MIT-licensed and ships with a desktop app, a CLI, an MCP server, and a VS Code extension.

What it is useful for

ApiArk is useful when an engineer wants to send and debug HTTP and non-HTTP requests locally without creating an account, syncing to a cloud, or burning hundreds of megabytes of RAM. Because collections are stored as standard YAML files inside a directory, the whole workspace can live in a Git repository, reviewed through git diff and shared with teammates through pull requests instead of a hosted workspace. The same model applies to mock servers, scheduled monitors, and proxy capture, all of which run on the developer's machine rather than a vendor cloud.

The collection runner and YAML format also make it a fit for data-driven testing. A request file can include assertions like status: 201 and responseTime: { lt: 2000 }, plus TypeScript snippets that call ark.test(), ark.expect(), and ark.env.set(). This covers typical API testing, contract checks, and CI runs.

How engineers can use it

The fastest path is to download a prebuilt installer for Windows, macOS, or Linux from the GitHub releases page, or use the documented package managers (Homebrew, Scoop, APT). Migrating from another tool is supported: open ApiArk, press Ctrl+K, choose "Import Collection," and load a Postman v2.1 export. Imports from Insomnia, Bruno, Hoppscotch, OpenAPI 3.x, HAR, and cURL are also documented.

For automation, the CLI exposes commands such as:

apiark run ./my-collection --env production
apiark run ./my-collection --data users.csv --reporter junit
apiark import postman-export.json

To build from source, the README lists Node.js 22+, pnpm 10+, and a Rust toolchain as prerequisites, then:

git clone https://github.com/berbicanes/apiark.git
cd apiark
pnpm install
pnpm tauri build

For development, pnpm tauri dev runs the desktop app in dev mode, and pnpm -C apps/desktop exec tsc --noEmit type-checks the TypeScript code.

Documented limitations to be aware of: the UI is currently translated only into English (other README translations exist, but the app itself ships in English), and the AI Assistant requires the user to supply an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint rather than including one.