A lightweight, local-first curl command builder and executor. Organize your API requests by service, tag them with labels, bookmark the important ones, and execute them — all from a clean terminal-inspired UI.

• Service-based organization — group your curl commands under named services (e.g. "Auth API", "Payment Gateway", "User Service")
• Build curl commands visually — pick method, set URL, headers (key-value pairs), and body; the curl command is generated live
• Execute locally — run curl natively on your machine via the Express backend, no CORS issues
• Verbose mode (-v) — toggle on/off; shows full TLS handshake, request/response headers in the output
• History with dedup — saving a request with the same method + URL replaces the old entry instead of creating duplicates
• Bookmarks — star important requests to pin them to the top of history
• Labels — tag requests with optional labels (e.g. "Get all users", "Create order"); add, edit, or remove labels anytime
• Filter by label — quickly find requests in history using the search filter
• Edit commands inline — modify any saved curl command directly in history
• Copy to clipboard — one-click copy for any generated or saved command
• Persistent storage — data saved as a plain JSON file on disk (data/services.json); delete it anytime to reset
• Export / Import — backup your data as JSON or restore from a previous export
• Configurable ports — customize both frontend and API server ports via environment variables

• Node.js (v18+)
• npm

git clone https://github.com/gitankit7/curlite.git
cd cURLite
npm install

# Start both frontend + backend
npm start

Open http://localhost:2401 in your browser.

Configure ports using environment variables:

# Method 1: Use specific port variables
DEV_PORT=3000 API_PORT=3001 npm start

# Method 2: Use legacy PORT variable (API will be PORT + 1)
PORT=3000 npm start  # frontend: 3000, API: 3001

# Method 3: Create .env file from .env.example
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your preferred ports
npm start

Default ports:

• Frontend (Vite): 2401
• API Server (Express): 2402

Environment variables:

• DEV_PORT — Frontend development server port
• API_PORT — API server port
• PORT — Legacy mode: sets frontend port, API becomes PORT + 1

Run cURLite in the background with error-only logging: Need some permissions first :)

chmod +x scripts/background.sh

# Start in background (recommended for daily use)
npm run start:bg

# Check status
npm run status:bg

# View error logs
npm run logs:bg

# Stop background process
npm run stop:bg

Manual background options:

# Background with error logging
npm start > /dev/null 2> curlite-errors.log &
echo $! > curlite.pid

# Check if running
kill -0 $(cat curlite.pid) && echo "Running" || echo "Stopped"

# Stop
kill $(cat curlite.pid) && rm curlite.pid

Frontend only? Run npm run dev if you just want the builder without curl execution.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  >_  cURLite                                    │
│      Select or create a service                 │
│                                                 │
│  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐      │
│  │ 🔵       │  │ 🟢       │  │ 🟠       │      │
│  │ Auth API │  │ Users    │  │ Payments │      │
│  │ 5 reqs   │  │ 3 reqs   │  │ 8 reqs   │      │
│  └──────────┘  └──────────┘  └──────────┘      │
│                                          [ + ]  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

curlite/
├── .gitignore
├── index.html                 # Entry HTML
├── package.json
├── vite.config.js             # Vite dev server (proxies /api → Express)
├── data/                      # Auto-created, gitignored
│   └── services.json          # Your saved data
├── server/
│   └── index.js               # Express backend — curl execution + data API
└── src/
    ├── main.jsx               # React entry point
    ├── App.jsx                # Root component, state management
    ├── storage.js             # Storage layer (disk + localStorage fallback)
    ├── curl.js                # Curl command generation + clipboard helpers
    ├── components.jsx         # Shared UI components (MethodBadge, TabBtn)
    ├── ServiceListScreen.jsx  # Service grid / home screen
    └── BuilderScreen.jsx      # Builder, history, response viewer

All data is persisted as a plain JSON file at:

data/services.json

This file and folder are auto-created on first use and gitignored by default. To reset everything, just delete the data/ folder.

The frontend also mirrors data to localStorage as a fast fallback, so running frontend-only (npm run dev) still works without the backend.

From the browser console:

// Download a backup
(await import('/src/storage.js')).default.exportJSON()

// Import from file
(await import('/src/storage.js')).default.importJSON(file)

The Express backend at localhost:2402 (or your configured API_PORT) exposes:

{
  "method": "GET",
  "url": "https://api.example.com/users",
  "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer token123" },
  "body": "{\"name\": \"test\"}",
  "verbose": true
}

• Frontend — React 18, Vite 5
• Backend — Express 4, Node.js child_process for native curl execution
• Styling — Inline CSS, IBM Plex Mono + Space Grotesk fonts
• Storage — JSON file on disk + localStorage fallback
• No database, no Docker, no config files — just npm install and go

1. Fork the repo
2. Create your branch (git checkout -b feature/my-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add my feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/my-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

MIT — do whatever you want with it.

Built with ☕ and a lot of curling.