Case Study

API Inspector

Chrome DevTools Extension

Role
Solo — Product, Design, Eng
Status
Live · Chrome Web Store
Stack
Manifest V3 · DevTools API
— Interactive Case Study
12 editorial spreads on the diff engine, drift lifecycle, and design principles.

A flip-through companion to this page — laid out like a devtools console.

Vaishali Aggarwal portfolio case study magazine cover
01
Overview

API contracts change constantly during development. Fields disappear, types shift, new data appears — and the UI usually finds out only after it's already broken.

API Inspector installs as a DevTools panel that watches every JSON response and flags contract drift the moment it happens, before it turns into a debugging session.

02
Highlights
Live DevTools panel

Tracked APIs, statuses, and pending updates in one place.

Automatic extraction

Live JSON turned into structural schemas — no manual contracts.

Field-level diffing

Flags added, removed, and type-changed paths precisely.

Breaking vs minor

Removed or changed fields are breaking; new fields are minor.

Manual approval

Nothing overwrites the saved baseline without review.

Per-origin storage

Every domain keeps its own isolated schema registry.

03
Technical Snapshot

A Manifest V3 extension split into five layers, so capture, diffing, and rendering never tangle together.

00Content ScriptOrigin detection
01Background WorkerMV3 request lifecycle
02DevTools PanelDiff + approval UI
03Schema EngineCompare · classify
04Storage Registrychrome.storage
04
Challenges
Why require manual approval?
Even minor changes can become future dependencies. Explicit approval keeps schema evolution intentional instead of silent.
Why classify before surfacing?
Added, removed, and type-changed fields are analyzed before they hit the UI, so impact is obvious at a glance.
Why local-first?
All processing happens inside the browser via chrome.storage. No response data ever leaves the machine.
05
Outcome

Published on the Chrome Web Store in March 2026, giving frontend developers a local-first way to catch drift before it becomes a harder-to-trace UI bug.

300
Web Store installs
400+
Listing page views
Solo
Built project
1wk
To ship
Zero backend, zero infra costAll growth organic, no paid promotion
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