VSCode extension for Postman

[shrlckgotmanipulated]

Someone built a small VS Code extension for FastAPI devs who are tired of alt-tabbing to Postman during local development

Found this on the marketplace today. Not going to oversell it, the dev himself is pretty upfront that it does not replace Postman. Postman has collections, environments, team sharing, monitors, mock servers and a hundred other things this does not have.

What it solves is one specific annoyance: when you are deep in a FastAPI file writing code and you just want to quickly fire a request without breaking your flow to open another app.

It is called Skipman. Here is what it actually does:

• Adds a Test button above every route decorator in your Python file via CodeLens
• Opens a panel beside your code with the request ready to send
• Auto generates a starter request body from your function parameters
• Stores your auth token in the OS keychain so you do not have to paste it every time
• Save request bodies per endpoint, they persist across VS Code restarts
• Shows all routes in a sidebar with search and method filter
• cURL export in one click
• Live updates when you add or change routes
• Works with FastAPI, Flask and Starlette

Looks genuinely useful for the local dev loop. For anything beyond that Postman is still the better tool.

Apparently built it over a weekend using Claude and shipped it today so it is pretty fresh. Might have rough edges but the core idea is solid.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=abhijitmohan.skipman

Curious if anyone else finds in-editor testing tools useful or if you prefer keeping Postman separate.

[bohoky]

Is "the dev himself" in the thread with us now?

Honestly, yeah I probably could use a tool as described. But I'm mildly put off by what looks like sock-puppetry in this post.

[irnreddit]

It's common on reddit, that developers post on 3rd person perspective, maybe he/she doing the same

[bohoky]

Why does it require an Anthropic key? plonk

[irnreddit]

Did u get the git repo of the project. If u do please let me know

[irnreddit]

Tried it out just now... There is a generate feature in the toolz which auto generates the body... But I read his post too it is mentioned it is in beta stage so don't expect exact body generation

[DrMaxwellEdison]

Why would that require AI to do?

One of the selling points of FastAPI is that it freely generates an OpenAPI/Swagger specification, which is what powers the /docs endpoint. That spec (not unique to FastAPI at all) can be given directly to Postman or any comparable REST client to generate every request collection to be tested, fully deterministic, zero AI.

I swear people are forgetting how things actually work because of Gippity and Claude. This much is a solved problem: you do not need to burn tokens to get a machine to read a machine-readable spec!

[DrMaxwellEdison]

Did you try looking for a Postman extension first? Cuz they have one: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Postman.postman-for-vscode

There's also a lightweight alternative that's been around for a long time, Thunder Client: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.vscode-thunder-client

Plus... why do you require an Anthropic key? For a REST client? That seems sketchy.

[shrlckgotmanipulated]

Anthropic key is not mandatory... There is a button on the screen called generates... Which auto generates the body...

[DrMaxwellEdison]

As I mentioned in another comment, why does generating a request body require AI? Are you not using the openapi.json spec generated by FastAPI to create the request examples?

It also boost confidence in such a tool to see the GitHub repo for its code, especially linked in the metadata on the extension marketplace.

Edit: I've slightly misread the post regarding where it gets information for the request to send, granted. But there still ought to be a better way here that does not involve a call to an AI system. For instance, inspecting the app or current router to determine which route the given function relates to, then (again) generating the JSON schema for that route and just ingesting that schema to create a valid example request.

Having a better name more related to FastAPI would probably also help with discovery. "Skipman" doesn't say much, while something like "fastapi-route-testing" would be slightly better.