Zagel

Zagel is a cross-platform, GUI REST workbench built with Rust + iced. It scans your workspace for request collections (.http) and environments (.env), lets you pick a request, edit it, and send it. Think of it as a workspace-native alternative to Postman or Insomnia for teams that already keep requests in .http files.

The UI is still rough around the edges but it's functioning with good keyboard shortcuts.

Features

• GUI request composer (method, URL, headers, body)
• Loads requests from .http files (blocks separated by ###)
• Loads environments from .env files (simple KEY=VALUE format)
• Variable substitution in URL/headers/body via {{VAR_NAME}}
• Periodic rescan of your configured roots

Install

Download a prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases (recommended), or build from source (below).

Build & run from source

cargo run

Release build:

cargo build --release

.http file format

Zagel treats each request as a block. Blocks are separated by lines starting with ###.

Example requests.http:

GET https://httpbin.org/get
Accept: application/json

###
POST https://httpbin.org/post
Content-Type: application/json

{"hello":"world"}

Rules:

• First non-empty line: METHOD URL
• Subsequent non-empty lines until the first blank line: headers (Name: Value)
• After the blank line: body (optional)

.env file format

Any file whose name ends with .env is treated as an environment. Format is KEY=VALUE per line; # starts a comment.

Example dev.env:

API_URL=https://httpbin.org
TOKEN=secret

You can use variables in requests as {{API_URL}} / {{TOKEN}}.

Configuration

Zagel stores settings in ~/.config/zagel/config.toml (exact location depends on your OS).

Supported keys:

• http_root (directory to scan for .http)
• env_root (directory to scan for *.env, defaults to http_root)
• polling_interval_secs (default 2)
• scan_depth (default 6)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, linting, and the suggested workflow.