⚡ consolio — Lightweight API Testing Tool

A fast, project-isolated Postman alternative. Runs as an npx package — no installation bloat, no licensing, ~30MB RAM.

Why consolio?

| | Postman | Apidog | consolio | | ------------------- | ---------- | ---------- | ------------------------ | | RAM Usage | ~300MB | ~400MB | ~30MB | | Disk (installed) | 400MB | 1GB+ | <15MB | | Project isolation | Workspaces | Workspaces | .consolio/ in repo | | Offline | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | License required | Yes | Freemium | MIT / Free | | Browser interceptor | Extension | Extension | ✓ Extension included | | npx support | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |

Quick Start

# Run immediately — no install
npx consolio

# Or install globally
npm install -g consolio
consolio

Opens at http://localhost:4242 automatically.

Project Isolation

Initialize consolio in any project to store collections alongside your code:

cd my-api-project
npx consolio init --name "My API Project"

This creates:

my-api-project/
└── .consolio/
    ├── config.json              # Project settings
    ├── collections/
    │   └── example.json         # Your API collections
    ├── environments/
    │   └── development.json     # Environment variables
    └── history/                 # Request history (gitignored)

Commit .consolio/collections/ and .consolio/environments/ to share API collections with your team. History is auto-gitignored.

Then run:

npx consolio        # Auto-detects .consolio/ in current dir

Features

✅ Request Builder

• All HTTP methods: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
• Query params, headers with enable/disable toggles
• Body: JSON, form-encoded, plain text, raw
• Auth: Bearer token, Basic auth, API key (header/query)

✅ Environment Variables

• Multiple environments (Development, Staging, Production)
• Use {{VAR_NAME}} syntax in URLs, headers, body
• Variables stored per-project in .consolio/environments/

✅ Collections

• Organize requests into collections
• Collections stored as readable JSON — version control friendly
• Expandable tree view in sidebar

✅ Request History

• Last 200 requests auto-saved
• Click any history entry to reload the request + response
• Stored in .consolio/history/ (gitignored)

✅ Response Viewer

• Syntax-highlighted JSON
• Response headers table
• Status code, timing (ms), size
• Copy response body

✅ Browser Interceptor

Install the Chrome extension to capture API calls made by any website:

1. Go to chrome://extensions/ → Enable Developer mode
2. Click Load unpacked → select the extension/ folder in this repo
3. Click the consolio icon → toggle Capture requests on
4. Browse any website — requests appear in consolio's Tap sidebar
5. Click any intercepted request to load it into the builder

CLI Reference

consolio                        # Start server (default port 4242)
consolio start --port 8080      # Custom port
consolio start --no-open        # Don't auto-open browser
consolio init                   # Initialize project
consolio init --name "My App"   # Initialize with project name
consolio --help                 # Show help
consolio --version              # Show version

Tech Stack

• Runtime: Node.js 18+ (ESM)
• Server: Fastify — fastest Node.js HTTP framework
• UI: Single-file React 18 (CDN) + custom CSS — no build step
• Storage: JSON files (zero dependencies, human-readable)
• WebSocket: ws — for real-time interceptor relay

Data Format

Collections are plain JSON — easy to read, diff, and merge:

{
  "id": "col_abc123",
  "name": "User API",
  "requests": [
    {
      "id": "req_def456",
      "name": "Get Users",
      "method": "GET",
      "url": "{{BASE_URL}}/users",
      "headers": [
        { "key": "Authorization", "value": "Bearer {{TOKEN}}", "enabled": true }
      ],
      "params": [],
      "body": { "type": "none" },
      "auth": { "type": "none" }
    }
  ]
}

Development

git clone ...
cd consolio
npm install
node bin/consolio.js         # Run directly

License

MIT