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animesh chaudhri edited this page May 28, 2026 · 1 revision

Rustman Wiki

Welcome to the official wiki for Rustman — a fast, native, open-source API testing desktop app built entirely in Rust.

Rustman is designed for developers who want a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to bloated Electron-based API tools.

Philosophy

Rustman is built around a few simple principles:

  • Native performance over browser stacks

  • Local-first workflows

  • Zero telemetry

  • No accounts or cloud lock-in

  • Fully open-source forever

Rustman is not a SaaS product and does not have paid plans, subscriptions, or feature gates.

Your requests, collections, environments, and history remain entirely on your machine.

Why Rustman?

Most API clients today are built on browser stacks or Electron, which often leads to:

  • High memory usage

  • Large install sizes

  • Slower startup times

  • Browser limitations

  • Cloud-first workflows

Rustman takes a different approach.

The entire application stack is native Rust:

  • GUI

  • Networking

  • Storage

  • Parsing

  • Git integration

No webviews. No Chromium runtime. No Electron.

This allows Rustman to stay lightweight while handling very large responses efficiently.

Core Features

Native GUI

Rustman uses iced with wgpu rendering for a fully native desktop experience.

Advantages:

  • Low memory usage

  • Faster startup

  • Better responsiveness

  • No browser overhead

Native HTTP Engine

Requests are handled through reqwest directly in Rust.

Benefits:

  • No browser CORS restrictions

  • Better performance

  • Large response handling

  • Lower overhead

Collections & History

Organize requests into collections and replay previous requests from local history.

Everything is stored locally using SQLite.

Git-Based Versioning

Collections are backed by real Git repositories internally.

Every save can become a Git commit, allowing:

  • Version tracking

  • History inspection

  • Rollbacks

  • Syncing through normal Git workflows

Environment Variables

Use variables like:

{{base_url}}
{{token}}

Variables can be used in:

  • URLs

  • Headers

  • Request bodies

Authentication Support

Rustman currently supports:

  • Bearer Token

  • Basic Auth

  • API Key

  • Cookie Auth

  • JWT

Import & Export

Supported imports:

  • cURL commands

  • Postman collections

  • OpenAPI specifications

Installation

macOS

Download the latest release and extract:

tar -xzf rustman-macos-universal.tar.gz

Then move Rustman.app into Applications.

Linux

chmod +x rustman
./rustman

Windows

Download and extract the latest ZIP release.

Build From Source

Requirements:

  • Stable Rust toolchain

Clone repository:

git clone https://github.com/animeshchaudhri/rustman
cd rustman

Build release:

cargo build --release

Run development build:

cargo run

Linux Dependencies

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install -y \
  libxkbcommon-dev libxi-dev libx11-dev \
  libxcb1-dev libxcb-xkb-dev libdbus-1-dev \
  pkg-config cmake build-essential

Tech Stack

Component | Technology -- | -- GUI | iced Rendering | wgpu HTTP | reqwest WebSocket | tokio-tungstenite Database | rusqlite Git integration | git2 Scripting | rquickjs Syntax highlighting | tree-sitter

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

You can help by:

  • Reporting bugs

  • Suggesting features

  • Improving documentation

  • Submitting pull requests

  • Testing across platforms

Links

Repository:
https://github.com/animeshchaudhri/rustman

Releases:
https://github.com/animeshchaudhri/rustman/releases

Issues:
https://github.com/animeshchaudhri/rustman/issues

Website:
https://animeshchaudhri.github.io/rustman/

License

Rustman is licensed under the MIT License.

Clone this wiki locally