My Daily Loop for the Past Two Years
This might be specific to how I work, but I suspect some of you feel this too.
My Daily Loop:
- Write client code in IntelliJ
- Need to test against a mock response
- Alt-Tab to browser — open JSON formatter
- Alt-Tab again — open the mock server tool
- Alt-Tab again — check the API spec
- Alt-Tab back to IntelliJ
- Realise I forgot to copy the URL
- Repeat this 15-20 times a day
The worst part was not the switching itself. It was losing the mental context every single time. You know that feeling where you finally get into flow state and then you have to stop to fiddle with a tool that lives somewhere else.
I tried Postman mock servers. Powerful but way too heavy for what I needed. I tried WireMock. Genuinely great tool — but it lives outside the IDE and needs its own config files and process. I tried a few browser extensions. Not integrated with anything, just more tabs.
The root problem none of them solved: I wanted the mock server to live where I write code. No switching. No separate process. No extra windows.
So about four months ago, I started building a plugin. REST mocking, gRPC mocking, SMTP and SFTP mocking — all running as local servers inside a tool window without leaving IntelliJ.
I just pushed the first public beta. It is free. Some rough edges definitely exist. There are probably bugs I haven't hit yet.
If you've felt this same context-switching pain, I would genuinely love feedback — not just installs, actual opinions on whether this solves the problem or misses something important.
https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/31488-foxmock--rest-grpc-smtp--sftp-mock-server
What is Your Current Setup for Mocking APIs During Development?
Curious what workflows others have.