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Tusk Drift

Turn production traffic into API tests

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Hi HN! In the past few months my team and I have been working on Tusk Drift, a system that records real API traffic from your service, then replays those requests as deterministic tests. Outbound I/O (databases, HTTP calls, etc.) gets automatically mocked using the recorded data.Problem we're trying to solve: Writing API tests is tedious, and hand-written mocks drift from reality. We wanted tests that stay realistic because they come from real traffic.versus mocking libraries: Tools like VCR/Nock intercept HTTP within your tests. Tusk Drift records full request/response traces externally (HTTP, DB, Redis, etc.) and replays them against your running service, no test code or fixtures to write/maintain.How it works:1. Add a lightweight SDK (we currently support Python and Node.js)2. Record traffic in any environment.3. Run `tusk run`, the CLI sandboxes your service and serves mocks via Unix socketWe run this in CI on every PR. Also been using it as a test harness for AI coding agents, they can make changes, run `tusk run`, and get immediate feedback without needing live dependencies.Source: https://github.com/Use-Tusk/tusk-drift-cliDemo: https://github.com/Use-Tusk/drift-node-demoHappy to answer questions!

HN · launched Jan 15, 2026 · 33 upvotes (top 27%) · 0 views

Niche: api testing and mocking tools · 85 launches, 7 in the last 7 days ▼ -22% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags
  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Developer
  • Not AI
  • Commercial product

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

More like this: all 85 launches in api testing and mocking tools →

Could you build this?

Partial The UI and test orchestration can be built quickly, but intercepting production network traffic, instrumenting outbound I/O (database queries, network requests), and deterministically replaying them with automated mocking requires non-trivial low-level runtime hooks.

What it would actually take: The system requires middleware or eBPF/bytecode instrumentation agents inside the application runtime (e.g., monkey-patching Node.js, JVM, or Go network/db drivers) to record exact incoming requests and downstream network/SQL responses. On replay, it must match incoming mock requests with high fidelity, sanitize sensitive production data, and filter nondeterminism (timestamps, UUIDs). This necessitates expertise in distributed systems tracing, bytecode/runtime instrumentation, and deterministic testing design.

Discussion

8 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: toran.sh (API governance and trace capture), voiden.md

Concerns raised: Sensitive data/PII leakage in captured traces and test fixtures, Currently lacks real-world performance/load testing capabilities, Doesn't measure real-world performance characteristics today

Feature requests: Performance/load testing capabilities, Capacity modeling and resource estimation, Ability to replay specific time periods for testing (e.g., Black Friday traffic)

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 130 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #52 of 131 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 75 days after the earliest competitor.

Related data

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