postchat README

Postchat is a VS Code extension that brings an AI-powered API client directly into your editor.

Features

⏺ It lets you:

• Load Postman collections or OpenAPI/Swagger specs
• Chat with an AI assistant about your API — ask questions, find endpoints, understand authentication, and get usage examples
• Explore endpoints in a structured browser with search and filtering
• Send requests from a dedicated request tab with a full editor for headers, body, and parameters — and view syntax-highlighted responses
• Combine AI + execution — ask the AI about an endpoint and jump straight into running it, or analyze a response with AI from the same panel

It bridges the gap between API documentation and live testing, all without leaving VS Code.

Explorer

The Explorer tab gives you an API-first view of your loaded collection/spec and keeps Chat actions connected to endpoint context.

How to use the Explorer tab

1. Click Load Collection and choose a supported file.
2. Open the Explorer tab.
3. Select an endpoint/operation.
4. Use Run to execute requests and Ask AI to send contextual questions to chat.
5. Use View in Explorer chips from assistant messages to jump back to endpoints.

Supported file types

• Postman Collection JSON
• OpenAPI 3.0 YAML/JSON
• Swagger 2.0 YAML/JSON

Chat bridge behavior

• Ask AI from Explorer generates endpoint-aware prompts in chat.
• Run executes the selected endpoint and returns a structured response viewer.
• View in Explorer links in chat jump to:
  • Postman endpoints in the custom sidebar
  • OpenAPI/Swagger operations in Stoplight (hash navigation)

Explorer keyboard shortcuts

• Cmd/Ctrl+F: Focus endpoint search (Postman explorer)
• Escape: Clear search or deselect endpoint
• Cmd/Ctrl+Enter: Run selected endpoint (when detail panel is focused)
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+A: Ask AI about selected endpoint

Requirements

If you have any requirements or dependencies, add a section describing those and how to install and configure them.

Extension Settings

Include if your extension adds any VS Code settings through the contributes.configuration extension point.

For example:

This extension contributes the following settings:

• myExtension.enable: Enable/disable this extension.
• myExtension.thing: Set to blah to do something.

Known Issues

Calling out known issues can help limit users opening duplicate issues against your extension.

Release Notes

Users appreciate release notes as you update your extension.

1.0.0

Initial release of ...

1.0.1

Fixed issue #.

1.1.0

Added features X, Y, and Z.

Following extension guidelines

Ensure that you've read through the extensions guidelines and follow the best practices for creating your extension.

• Extension Guidelines

Working with Markdown

You can author your README using Visual Studio Code. Here are some useful editor keyboard shortcuts:

• Split the editor (Cmd+\ on macOS or Ctrl+\ on Windows and Linux).
• Toggle preview (Shift+Cmd+V on macOS or Shift+Ctrl+V on Windows and Linux).
• Press Ctrl+Space (Windows, Linux, macOS) to see a list of Markdown snippets.

For more information

• Visual Studio Code's Markdown Support
• Markdown Syntax Reference

Enjoy!