Developer tools

These are the utilities you'd otherwise run from a terminal command or look up on Stack Overflow: encoding and decoding data formats, hashing strings, pretty-printing a JSON blob, generating test data, creating cryptographically strong passwords. The audience is working developers — but also designers who need to inspect a JWT, no-code builders debugging an API response, and anyone whose workflow occasionally hits a data format they need to translate. Visual styling tools (color pickers, CSS generators, typography scales) live in the Design category; this category is the code-editor and terminal-utility half.

The encode subcategory covers format encoding and decoding. The Base64 encoder/decoder handles both directions: encode a string or binary blob to Base64 for embedding in JSON, a data URI, or an HTTP header, and decode it back. The URL encoder/decoder handles percent-encoding — useful when a URL contains characters that need escaping before being passed as a query parameter. A JWT decoder splits a JSON Web Token into its three parts (header, payload, signature), decodes the Base64url encoding, and shows the claims — it verifies the structure but not the signature, since signature verification requires the secret key. A QR code generator encodes a URL or text string as a scannable image. An HTML entities encoder converts characters like <, >, and & to their named entity forms and back.

The hash subcategory generates cryptographic digests. A single hash generator produces MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, and SHA-512 outputs simultaneously from the same input — useful for comparing a downloaded file's checksum against a published hash, or checking whether two strings hash to the same value. An HMAC calculator adds a key to produce a keyed message authentication code. A bcrypt playground lets you hash a password with a configurable cost factor and verify a string against a stored hash — the right tool for understanding bcrypt's work factor before choosing a value for production. A checksum calculator covers CRC32 and Adler-32 for the cases where those simpler algorithms are specified.

The parse subcategory handles structured data. The JSON formatter validates and pretty-prints JSON — paste a one-line API response and get indented, readable output with syntax highlighting. A regex tester shows matches and capture groups in real time as you edit the pattern, with support for flags. YAML and XML formatters work the same way. A JSONPath tester evaluates a JSONPath expression against a document and shows the matched nodes — useful when the response is deeply nested and you need to know whether your path expression is correct before you put it in code.

The security subcategory covers credential generation. A password generator produces cryptographically random passwords at any length with configurable character sets (uppercase, lowercase, digits, symbols). A Diceware passphrase generator picks words from the EFF long wordlist using the same randomness source — producing passphrases like "correct-horse-battery-staple" that are both strong and memorable. A UUID generator produces v1 (timestamp-based), v4 (random), and v7 (time-ordered random) UUIDs.

The generate subcategory creates test data. A lorem ipsum generator produces Latin placeholder text in paragraphs, sentences, or words. A fake user data generator creates realistic-looking names, email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses for use in development and testing. A random name picker selects from a pasted list, useful for code reviews, retro facilitators, and classroom cold-calling.

What these tools don't replace: a full IDE, a code review system, a debugger, or a security audit. They're single-purpose pages that do one job well. For anything that requires running code, inspecting a call stack, or analyzing a whole codebase, you need the full development environment these tools sit alongside.