We open-sourced Voiden: Offline-first, git-native API tool built on Markdown

We just open-sourced Voiden, an API tool we have been building.

Important to mention that this was NOT a “let’s build a better Postman” kind of thing. In fact, we explicitly tried not to do that.

Background:
Over time, API tooling drifted into heavyweight platforms: cloud dependencies, forced accounts, per-seat pricing, proprietary formats, and workflows that break the moment you’re offline. Testing a localhost API started requiring an internet connection. Specs, tests, and docs drifted into separate tools, and developers learned to live with the friction.

Voiden started from a (simple??) reset question:

What if an API tool respected how developers already work?

Some choices that came as a result of this:

• Offline-first, no accounts, no telemetry

• Git as the source of truth

• No proprietary formats — APIs live as Markdown

• Specs, tests, and docs live together, in one file

• Reuse via importable/inheritable Markdown blocks

We open-sourced it because extensibility without openness just moves the bottleneck upstream. If workflows should be transparent, the tool should be too. If developers should NOT surrender control of their APIs, the tool managing them can’t be a black box.

We would love all the feedback, especially from people who have felt friction with existing API tooling and wondered why it has to be this complicated.

Happy to answer questions.