Install httptap with Homebrew, Nix

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• httptap

Project history

The ozeranskii/httptap repository was created in October 2025. The README frames the project as a Rich-powered Python CLI built on httpcore trace hooks, with output modes ranging from waterfall timelines to compact summaries and metrics-only exports.

The documentation shows a project that treated release engineering and supply-chain details as part of the product early on: the release process page describes automated versioning, changelog generation, signing, PyPI/TestPyPI publishing, GitHub releases, and container-image publication.

Adoption history

Adoption signals are early but concrete. The project ships through PyPI, Homebrew, Nix, source installs, and a GHCR container image, and its README badges point to CI, coverage, CodeQL, OpenSSF Scorecard, and OpenSSF Best Practices.

The README compares httptap directly with curl -w, httpstat, and httpie. That positioning makes it part of a lineage of command-line request debugging tools rather than a general HTTP client.

How it is used

Users invoke httptap with a URL and optional request flags to produce a timeline, compact summary, JSON export, or metrics-only output. The README documents all HTTP methods, custom headers, request bodies, redirects, SLO threshold checks, and TLS certificate inspection.

The security assurance documentation says httptap is a command-line diagnostic tool, not a server, account system, credential store, or remote-code execution surface. Credentials supplied as headers are forwarded for the diagnostic request rather than persisted as long-lived application state.

Why package nerds care

httptap matters to package nerds because it modernizes the old curl/httpstat timing idea with richer terminal rendering, Python packaging, signed release artifacts, and explicit supply-chain documentation. It is small in scope but polished in distribution.

Its comparison table makes the packaging niche unusually clear: curl -w is the primitive, httpstat is the older visual wrapper, httpie is a request explorer, and httptap focuses on observable request phases with structured export.

Timeline

• 2025: GitHub repository created.
• 2026: v0.4.x and v0.5.x releases published through GitHub releases.
• 2026: Security assurance document reviewed for httptap 0.5.0.
• 2026: Documentation describes automated release, signing, PyPI, TestPyPI, GitHub Release, and GHCR publication flow.

Related projects

• curl -w is the baseline shell primitive that can emit timing values.
• httpstat is the older curl-backed visual timing tool named in httptap's comparison table.
• httpie is a general HTTP request exploration CLI that httptap distinguishes from timing diagnostics.
• httpcore provides the trace-hook foundation named by the README for detailed phase measurement.

Sources

• GitHub releases supply the 2026 release timeline.
• GitHub repository metadata supplies the creation date, description, homepage, license, and popularity signal.
• The README supplies purpose, feature set, install paths, output modes, comparisons, and usage.
• The documentation supplies security posture and release-process details.