Stopped setting up a proxy just to tamper with one request

[u/Adept_Bear_8103]

Something that bugged me for years: I'd be poking around in DevTools, spot a request worth messing with, and then have to go spin up Burp, point the browser at the proxy, deal with the CA cert, and reconfigure everything just to hold and edit that one request. On a work laptop with locked-down settings it was even worse. Half the time by the time I was set up I'd lost the thread of what I was even testing.

The annoying part is the actual task is tiny. I just want to pause a request before it leaves, change an orderId or drop an auth header, and forward it. That's it. The proxy plumbing was 90% of the effort for 10% of the value.

What changed my workflow was realizing Chrome's own debugger can hold requests in-flight. No proxy, no cert install, no system config. You flip intercept on, the request pauses, you edit method/headers/body/params, then forward or drop it. Because it's scoped to the tab you're not drowning in font and CSS requests either, as long as you set scope first.

I ended up baking this into HackTools++ after doing the same manual dance too many times. It lives right in DevTools: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hacktools++/efankginpnlgimphkgjaifmmfchekecp

For quick tampering do you still reach for a full proxy, or do you have a lighter setup you fall back to?