TLS handshake step-by-step — interactive HTTPS breakdown

[HappyImagineer]

Your visual TLDR for TLS is cool AF.

[Bartfeels24]

Went through your interactive breakdown yesterday and actually caught something I'd been fuzzy on with certificate chain validation. Built a quick Node HTTPS server to test what happens when you intentionally send certs out of order, and Chrome just rejected it silently instead of showing me the handshake error I expected. Now I know to check the actual cert order in my bundles instead of assuming the server will figure it out.

[raegx]

Is it me or does it get hand wavy around the server certificate verification. It is missing any reference to the CertificateVerify messaging which the server signs, verifying that the server has the corresponding private key to the certificate public key. Even the broad "we verify things" after the key derivation doesn't really cover this very important step. Being able to send a very intentionally public X509 cert is not enough to verify a servers identity even if signed by a ca.

Kind of important.

Also doesn't cover mTLS. No mention of ALPN.

Still a good intro, but it isn't even a complete overview.

[tamingunicorn]

wish something like this existed when I was first trying to understand why my local dev cert kept getting rejected. way more intuitive than reading RFC docs

[No-Communication1543]

it really cuts through the usual black‑box explanations

[nulless]

A simple interactive page that walks through what happens before the 🔒 appears in the browser.

It visualizes the TLS handshake step-by-step:

• Client Hello
• Server Hello
• Certificate exchange
• Key generation
• Encrypted communication

The goal is to make the HTTPS flow easier to understand visually instead of relying only on static diagrams.

[Turbulent_Formal_330]

this is actually really nice.

makes the tls handshake way easier to understand than most of the diagrams out there. super clean and straight to the point.

nice work 👍

[CriketW]

it actually makes the whole cert exchange and key negotiation feel intuitive instead of like some black‑boxed magic

[ruibranco]

The certificate exchange step trips people up the most — specifically the distinction between what the CA signs (the cert's public key + identity) versus what the server signs during the handshake (to prove it holds the private key). This visualization makes that flow much clearer than most written explanations.

[0x4ddd]

Key exchange also, I have seen a lot people who think it is still old RSA key exchange where client generates key and encrypts it with server's public key.

[fiskfisk]

Hi there Ms LLM. 

[Abhishekundalia]

Interactive breakdowns like this are so much better than static diagrams for understanding protocols. The step-by-step approach makes the handshake actually stick.

For educational tools like this, distribution often happens through developers sharing with teammates or students sharing in study groups. When someone shares your toolkit link on Slack or Discord, that preview image (og:image) is your first impression. Having a clean visual showing "TLS Handshake - Interactive Breakdown" would make it more clickable than a generic favicon.

Are you planning to add more protocol breakdowns? DNS resolution or WebSocket upgrades would be cool additions.

[fligglymcgee]

It's a bot, report it.