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Volt

Fast, Git-native API client written in Zig (Postman alternative)

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Hey HN,I wanted to build something real in Zig, and I was annoyed that Postman needed an account and an internet connection just to send a GET request. So I figured I'd make something I would actually use.It kind of snowballed from there. 50,000+ lines later, it does requests, test assertions, collections, environments, CI/CD reports, import/export, and has a browser-based Web UI (`volt ui`). All in a single binary with zero external dependencies.Some numbers: - Binary size: ~4 MB (Postman: ~500 MB) - Startup: 42ms (Postman: 3-8 seconds) - RAM idle: ~5 MB (Postman: 300-800 MB) - Dependencies: 0 - Account required: No It uses plain-text .volt files that live in your git repo. Your API tests are just files, versioned with your code.For CI, you copy one binary and run `volt test`. No npm, no Docker, no runtime.Why Zig? Honestly, I wanted an excuse to write a lot of Zig. But the explicit allocators, comptime, and cross-compilation from one machine made it practical to ship Linux/macOS/Windows from a single codebase with no external packages.There's a CLI, a TUI with tabs and search, and a Web UI. It's not perfect but I use it daily and it hasn't crashed on me yet.Site: https://api-volt.com Repo: https://github.com/volt-api/volt Benchmarks: https://github.com/volt-api/volt/blob/main/BENCHMARKS.mdHappy to answer questions about the Zig implementation, that's the part I'm most excited to talk about honestly.

HN · launched Mar 10, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 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
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

No Volt is a massive (50k+ lines) native systems-level desktop application written in Zig with an embedded GUI, custom HTTP/TLS engine, and Git integration.

What it would actually take: Volt requires writing low-level Zig code interfacing directly with platform graphics/UI (or an immediate-mode GUI framework like raylib/cimgui/DVUI), native networking (libcurl or custom Zig HTTP client with TLS), and libgit2 bindings for Git-native storage. The hard parts include memory management in Zig without a garbage collector, cross-platform UI rendering, request pipelining, and testing suites for complex HTTP/REST workflows.

Discussion

No comments on this launch.

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 154 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #144 of 155 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 125 days after the earliest competitor.

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