Skip to content
ChainAPI

ChainAPI

Postman is an HTTP client. ChainAPI is an API workflow engine.
Get started in 5 minutes View on GitHub

Stop copying tokens between Postman tabs

Section titled “Stop copying tokens between Postman tabs”

Modern SaaS backends are multi-actor. To test “admin approves a customer refund”, you need to log in as three actors and create six prerequisite records first. ChainAPI treats your API as a dependency graph: define each actor and resource once, then run any endpoint with a single command — the engine auto-resolves the entire chain.

Terminal window
chainapi run refund.approve --project marketplace
# resolves: vendor.login → customer.verify_otp →
#           product.create → product.publish →
#           order.create → order.pay →
#           refund.request → refund.approve
# 9 steps. 3.4 seconds. Zero copy-paste.

Why teams switch

Section titled “Why teams switch”

Auto-resolved chains

Click any endpoint. The engine builds the prerequisite chain from your schema and runs it in topological order.

Multi-actor first

Admin, vendor, customer, worker — each actor’s auth flow is defined once. No more re-logging in every morning.

One file, every environment

Local, staging, production. Same schema. Switch with --env.

AI importer

Generate a working schema from your OpenAPI spec, Markdown docs, or pasted curl logs in ~5 minutes.

Open core

Apache 2.0 engine, CLI, schema, and desktop. No vendor lock-in.

Local-first

Your project, schemas, and history live on your machine. Nothing forced to the cloud.

Quick install

Section titled “Quick install”
/dev/building/
# Coming with v1 release. Today: build from source — see
brew install chainapi/tap/chainapi

Compared to other tools

Section titled “Compared to other tools”

| | Postman | Bruno | Insomnia | ChainAPI | |--------------------------------|---------|-------|----------|--------------| | Auto-resolved request chains | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | First-class actor abstraction | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | AI importer for any spec | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | | Git-friendly schema files | partial | ✅ | partial | ✅ | | Open source | ❌ | ✅ | partial | ✅ | | Local-first by default | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | | CLI for CI/CD | partial | ✅ | partial | ✅ |

Where to next

Section titled “Where to next”

5-minute tour

See ChainAPI run the marketplace sample end-to-end. Take the tour →

Authoring guide

Learn the schema by example. From auth flows to dependency chains. Read the guide →

AI importer

Convert your existing OpenAPI / Postman / curl into a runnable schema. Use the playbook →

Architecture

How the engine resolves chains, caches sessions, and stays Qt-UI-free. Architecture →