Features

Workflow-level reference for every feature Bowire ships. Each page covers what the feature does, how to invoke it, the relevant keyboard shortcuts, and any protocol-specific caveats.

For the UI layout itself — panes, action bar, sidebar, theme — see the User Guide. For protocol-specific behaviour, see the Protocol Guides.

Making requests

• Auto-discovery — how services and methods are found per protocol (reflection, OpenAPI, SDL, MCP listing)
• Form & JSON input — switching between the schema-backed form and raw JSON editor
• Freeform requests — sending ad-hoc requests without a registered schema
• Authentication — Bearer / Basic / API Key / JWT / OAuth 2.0 / AWS Sig v4 / custom token provider
• Response chaining — click any value in a response to paste ${response.path} into the next request

Streaming & channels

• Streaming — server / client / bidirectional streaming with the append-only message log
• Duplex channels — long-running interactive channels (WebSocket, SignalR, MQTT, Socket.IO)
• Multi-channel manager — multiple concurrent streams open at once
• Console / log view — chronological log of every request and response

Recording & replay

• Recording — capture a sequence of calls; inspect, export, or replay them
• Replay mock server — turn a recording into a live endpoint with bowire mock
• Test assertions — convert recording steps into CI-runnable assertions

Automation

• Flows — visual pipelines with branching, loops, assertions, and response forwarding
• Performance graphs — repeat a call N times with latency percentiles (P50/P90/P99/P99.9)

Environments & data

• Environments & variables — per-environment ${var} substitution + auth
• Collections — group related requests for sharing and review
• Favorites & history — star methods, replay previous invocations
• Workspace files (.blw) — the on-disk format for collections, flows, and environments
• Export & import — HAR / cURL / Postman interchange

UI & productivity

• Command palette — /-launcher for methods, environments, protocol filters
• Keyboard shortcuts — the full binding list
• Empty-state landing — context-sensitive welcome / retry / discovery-failed screens
• Settings dialog — per-plugin configuration, data paths, theme
• Responsive & mobile — how the UI adapts below 900px

Command line & extending

• CLI mode — bowire list / describe / call for scripting and automation
• Plugin system — building a custom protocol plugin against IBowireProtocol