Why Developer Tools Should Be Fast

Speed isn't a feature. It's the whole point.

A tool that makes you wait has already failed at its job. You reached for it because you had something to do — format some JSON, check a diff, decode a token. The tool exists to get out of the way and let you keep moving. Every second it spends loading, processing, or phoning home is a second it's costing you instead of saving you.

The problem with most online tools

Most developer tools on the web are slow by design. They're slow because they run your input through a server — your JSON hits their API, gets processed, comes back. That's a round trip for a job your browser could do in a millisecond.

Why do they do this? Usually because the server-side approach is easier to build and easier to monetize. It gives them a reason to require an account, collect your data, and show you an ad while the spinner spins.

Running in the browser isn't a compromise

Running tools in the browser used to mean giving up performance. That's no longer true. Modern JavaScript is fast. For anything CPU-heavy — large file diffs, cryptographic hashing, binary parsing — WebAssembly lets you run compiled Rust at near-native speed, directly in the tab.

There's no round trip. There's no server. Your data doesn't leave your machine.

That's not a limitation we're working around. That's the right way to build this.

What fast actually means

Fast means the result appears before you're done reaching for your mouse. Fast means you can paste a 50,000-line JSON file and not watch a progress bar. Fast means the tool respects your time the same way a good command-line utility does — it does the job and gets out of the way.

That's the standard every tool here is built to.