Postman

A graphical HTTP client for designing, testing, and documenting APIs — the standard "poke the endpoint" tool on most teams.

At a glance

Field	Value
Category	API client / devtool
Difficulty	Beginner
When to use	Exploring APIs, sharing request collections, debugging
When not to use	Automated CI tests, load testing
Alternatives	Insomnia, Bruno, HTTPie, curl

What it is

Postman is a desktop and web app for sending HTTP requests. You fill in the URL, method, headers, body, and auth in a form, hit Send, and see the response pretty-printed. Requests are saved into collections you can share across a team or commit to a repo.

When we reach for it at Ephizen

Verifying a brand-new LLM provider’s API before wiring it into code.
Sharing a reproducible bug report with a vendor — export the request, they import it.
Building a small regression suite of “these endpoints should return this” checks.
Onboarding — a new engineer can run through a prebuilt collection to understand our services.

Getting started

1. Install the desktop app (or use the web version).
2. Create a Workspace and a Collection.
3. Add a request: method, URL, headers, body.
4. Store secrets as environment variables — never commit them.

Gotchas

The cloud sync feature saves collections to Postman’s servers by default. Check your company’s policy before storing sensitive tokens.
Postman’s scripting (pre-request and test tabs) is a trap at scale — once your tests get complex, move them into real code.
Bruno is a fully local, git-friendly alternative worth considering if you care about version control of API tests.