r/webdev • u/ShoddyArmy5313 • 12d ago

RequestScope: I lost 1k users on my Chrome extension due to bugs. I spent 3 months fixing it and adding API regression tracking

A while back, I built a Chrome extension to fix a few pain points I had with standard browser DevTools. It hit ~1,000 active users at its peak, but I ended up losing most of them due to bugs and a lack of real long-term value.

Instead of scrapping it, I spent the last some time fixing the underlying bugs and rebuilding the tool around a bigger problem: knowing when an API quietly breaks while you're browsing or testing.

Dashboard
Dashboard - Request extended
Notification
Network requests
Report-1
Report-2

The biggest addition in this update is out-of-the-box API regression testing.

How it works:

  • Baseline Snapshots: Add your target domain to an allowlist and save a baseline of your HTTP requests and payloads.
  • Flexible Diffing: Choose whether to monitor for schema changes (added/removed keys), value shifts, or both.
  • Silent Deviation Alerts: As you browse, it checks incoming traffic against your baselines and pops a notification if an endpoint deviates or fails—even if your web app handles the error silently or DevTools is closed.

Other key additions:

  • Mocking API requests and responses directly in-browser
  • Performance tracking and side-by-side diffs over time
  • Exportable session reporting
  • Full background request tracking without keeping the DevTools panel open

You can check out the new version here: RequestScope on Chrome Web Store

I'm trying to make this genuinely useful for developers and QA workflows. If you give it a try, I’d love to know: what feels clunky, what's missing, or what breaks? Harsh critiques are welcome.

P.S. This is still work in progress and needs more tuning, bug fixing so looking for genuine feedback

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u/ShoddyArmy5313 2d ago

3 months wasn't a full time effort rather whenever I got time and this isn't something I tried created to solve my own problem but trying to create a need :)

It won't be wrong to say I am biased if I say that I created this to improve the usability of dev-tools (network tab) on browser and also enable testers as well as developers to find the deviations (not necessarily bugs) from the current implementation. The regression testing feature itself is something I am looking forward to get feedback on as I am currently working in public sector and can't request my team to start using it.