Watcher

A polished, local-first desktop client for organizing, running, and inspecting API requests.

Watcher keeps API work on your device. Workspaces, collections, environments, request drafts, tabs, and history are stored in a local SQLite database—there is no account, cloud service, or telemetry.

• Nested, searchable request collections with keyboard-accessible drag and drop
• Persistent workspaces and request tabs with explicit dirty/save state
• HTTP, HTTPS, headers, query parameters, JSON, text, and form-data bodies
• Local environment variables using {{ variable }} substitution
• Constrained pre-request and post-response scripts with a two-second timeout
• Formatted response body, headers, status, timing, size, and copy actions
• Local request history with replay
• Nested Postman Collection and OpenAPI JSON import
• English and Simplified Chinese, with dark, light, and system themes
• Signed in-app updates from GitHub Releases

Download the installer for Windows, macOS, or Linux from GitHub Releases.

Watcher 1.0 uses a new SQLite database and intentionally does not import or delete Watcher 0.9 browser/localForage data.

• Node.js 24
• pnpm 10
• Stable Rust
• Tauri v2 platform dependencies

pnpm install
pnpm tauri:dev

Useful checks:

pnpm lint
pnpm typecheck
pnpm test
pnpm build
pnpm tauri:check

The browser-only pnpm dev mode uses an in-memory demo repository. Packaged and Tauri development builds use SQLite in the platform application-data directory.

• React 19, TypeScript, Vite, React Router 7
• TanStack Query for asynchronous persisted state and Zustand for transient UI state
• shadcn-style components, Radix primitives, Tailwind CSS, dnd-kit, and TanStack Virtual
• React Hook Form and Zod for validated request/environment editing
• CodeMirror 6 for bodies, scripts, and responses
• Tauri v2 with Rust commands and bundled SQLite
• Tauri HTTP, updater, process, and opener plugins

The design source of truth is DESIGN.md. It includes the Stitch project, design-system, and primary-screen identifiers used for the Watcher 1.0 redesign.

Watcher grants its main Tauri window HTTP and HTTPS access because arbitrary endpoints are the product’s core purpose. Native commands use typed arguments and validate workspace ownership, parent types, tree cycles, and transactional deletion.

Request scripts run in a dedicated Web Worker with no DOM or Tauri API access. The worker is terminated after two seconds and only receives the request, response, environment map, and a small watcher API:

watcher.environment.get("token");
watcher.environment.set("token", "new value");
watcher.log(response.status);

Do not run scripts from an untrusted collection without reviewing them.