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helena 0.9.1 Desktop app · windows · macos · linux · open source · free

bartosz@idct:~/software/helena$ ls docs/

docs

Getting started, building from source, the feature guides and packaging.

A small, single-binary, cross-platform API client — a native alternative to Postman and Bruno, built with Go + Fyne. One self-contained ~35 MB binary, no Electron, no telemetry.

Get started → View on GitHub →

Why Helena

  • Plain-text, version-controllable storage. Collections, folders, and requests are stored as Open Collection YAML on disk — diff and commit them like any other source. Credentials are kept out of that YAML (externalized to a store under your config dir), so a committed collection carries no cleartext secret.
  • Variables everywhere. {{variable}} resolution in the URL, query, headers, and body, across a layered scope chain (global → collection .env → collection → environment → folder → request → script overlay), with a live resolved-URL preview.
  • A real request builder. Method, URL, query, headers, and bodies — JSON / XML / text / GraphQL / form-urlencoded / multipart / file — with Validate + Format for JSON and XML.
  • Native, not a browser. Helena always sends the request and flags responses a browser's CORS policy would have blocked, instead of refusing to send.

Highlights

  • Nine authentication schemes — Basic, Bearer, API Key, OAuth 2.0 (client-credentials & auth-code + PKCE), OAuth 1.0a, WSSE, AWS Signature v4, HTTP Digest, and NTLM. See Authentication.

  • Real-time — stream Server-Sent Events and open bidirectional WebSocket sessions, both hand-rolled on the standard library. See Real-time.

  • Scripting & assertions — pre/post JavaScript hooks with a curated helena.* API (env, interpolate, sendRequest, cookies, hashing, …), a test()/expect() framework, and declarative no-code assertions. See Scripting.

  • Chaining & a headless runner — run other requests first and feed their results forward, and run a whole collection from the CLI with helena run.

Install

Grab a binary from the releases page, or build from source:

bash
git clone https://github.com/ideaconnect/helena
cd helena
go build -o helena ./cmd/helena

See Getting started for a first request and Packaging for platform builds.

Documentation

These pages follow the Markdown in the repository's docs/ directory. Deep, per-package design notes live alongside the code in each module's README.md / STRUCTURE.md / WORKFLOW.md.