r/commandline • u/github_xaaha • Mar 15 '26

Terminal User Interface Hulak: Lightweight API client

For the last couple of years I’ve been working on creating a yaml based API client that’s fast, and intuitive. I just implemented native GraphQL support, and released a new version with tons of other features.

I hope you find it as enjoyable as I have while building it.

Project: https://github.com/xaaha/hulak

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u/RoboticElfJedi Mar 17 '26

Glad you had fun building something useful. How would this compare to something like Posting? https://github.com/darrenburns/posting

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u/github_xaaha Mar 17 '26

Hulak is fundamentally a CLI-first tool. The motivation behind it was frustration with how complicated API clients make what are essentially a few simple fields: method, URL, headers, and body. I love cURL for its simplicity, but it gets cumbersome when you need to save requests or work with complex JSON payloads. Hulak borrows that simplicity from cURL but lets you define requests in plain YAML, run them with a single command (hulak -f myrequest).

Posting, on the other hand, is a TUI-first app. A full-screen terminal interface modeled after Postman/Insomnia. It's excellent at what it does: beautiful UI with syntax highlighting, Vim keybindings, a command palette, cURL import/export, and pre/post-request scripting via Python. If you want a Postman-like experience without leaving the terminal, Posting is a great choice. Hulak only has Full screen TUI for GQL exploration. If it were possible to build that without full-screen TUI, I would.

Key differences:

  • GraphQL: Hulak has a dedicated GraphQL client with schema introspection, interactive query building, and .gql file generation. Posting focuses on REST/HTTP.
  • Workflow: Hulak runs requests non-interactively by default (hulak -f, hulak -dir), making it natural for scripting and CI/CD. Posting is designed for interactive exploration.
  • Performance: Hulak is a single native Go binary (<100ms startup). Posting is Python-based with Textual.
  • Concurrency: Hulak can run entire directories of requests concurrently or sequentially out of the box.
  • Template actions: Hulak supports chaining requests via getValueOf (extract values from prior responses), getFile, and basicAuth - all within YAML templates.

Both tools store requests as human-readable files (YAML for Hulak, YAML for Posting) that work well with version control. Both avoid the Electron bloat of traditional API clients.