insomnia-plugin-env-diff

Local-only environment comparison for Insomnia. v1.1.0 writes a redacted JSON sidecar next to every Markdown report for saved audits, diffing, and automation.

Env Diff exports a redacted Markdown report showing environment drift: missing keys, prod/dev URL mismatches, duplicate environment names, empty or short secret-like values, and suspicious same values across environments.

Why

API teams often keep Base, Dev, Staging, and Production environments in one workspace. Over time those environments drift: keys go missing, staging points to prod, prod points to sandbox, and copied secrets leak into the wrong place.

Features

• Adds a key matrix across all exposed environments
• Adds desktop export diagnostics and paste-JSON fallback
• Writes a redacted JSON sidecar next to every Markdown report
• Compares all Insomnia environments in the workspace
• Flags keys missing from one or more environments
• Flags dev/staging environments pointing at production-like hosts
• Flags production environments pointing at dev/test hosts
• Flags empty or suspiciously short secret-like values
• Flags same non-secret values across environments
• Flags duplicate environment names
• Exports a local redacted Markdown report
• No cloud, no telemetry, no backend, no dependencies

Install

From Insomnia:

1. Open Preferences → Plugins
2. Enter insomnia-plugin-env-diff
3. Click Install Plugin

Manual macOS install:

cd "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Insomnia/plugins"
npm install insomnia-plugin-env-diff

Usage

Run:

Env Diff: Export Report

The action is exposed through workspaceActions, requestGroupActions, and requestActions. In Insomnia 13 it may appear in the New Request dropdown.

Each export writes two local files:

insomnia-env-diff.md
insomnia-env-diff.json

The JSON sidecar uses schema insomnia-env-diff/v1 and includes:

{
  "schema": "insomnia-env-diff/v1",
  "generatedAt": "...",
  "summary": {
    "environmentsCompared": 2,
    "keysCompared": 5,
    "totalFindings": 3,
    "high": 1,
    "medium": 1,
    "low": 1
  },
  "matrix": [],
  "findings": []
}

Example report

# Insomnia Env Diff Report

## Summary

- High: 1
- Medium: 2
- Low: 3

| Severity | Type | Location | Message | Preview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| high | dev-points-to-prod | Dev.base_url | Development/staging environment points at production-like host | Dev: api.production.example.com |

Desktop validation notes

In some Insomnia Desktop menu contexts, context.data.export.insomnia() may expose zero environment resources. Env Diff now reports env-export-empty and prompts for pasted environment JSON when Insomnia does not expose environments. Paste either a single environment object or { "Dev": {...}, "Prod": {...} } to run full pairwise diff locally.

Privacy

• Local-only
• No network calls
• No analytics
• No account required
• Exports with includePrivate: false
• Secret-like values are redacted in reports

Development

git clone https://github.com/oliviajohns5/insomnia-plugin-env-diff.git
cd insomnia-plugin-env-diff
npm test
npm run test:hard
npm run test:packaged
npm pack --dry-run

Verified QA

• node --check main.js
• node --check test.js
• node --check hard-qa.js
• node --check real-insomnia-packaged-test.js
• node --check qa-packaged.js
• npm test
• npm run test:hard
• npm run test:packaged
• npm pack --dry-run
• isolated tarball install
• package metadata validation
• credential literal scan

Requirements

• Insomnia
• Node.js/npm only for development or publishing

License

MIT