If you live in HTTP and CSV exports
Why API Butler exists
You have been here before: a spreadsheet is the honest source of truth, your frontend or script needs JSON, and the “real” backend is still a ticket in the backlog. So you reach for a throwaway server, a brittle script, or a database you will tear down next week—just to serve rows over HTTP.
API Butler is for that gap. Upload the file, get a live endpoint you can hit with curl, read from your app, and hand to a teammate—without acting like you are launching a platform.
I build calm tools for developers who still have to ship
API Butler came from my own impatience: turning a CSV into something you can actually call over HTTP should not steal a day of wiring, Docker, or half-finished side projects.
I care about workflows that remain legible weeks later—REST you can skim, docs that tell the truth, and a surface that stays small even when the infra underneath is serious.
Putting a face to the product is intentional. When you integrate an API that holds your rows, trust matters. If something is unclear or painful, reach out—we iterate from real integrations, not slideware.
The problem
Lightweight work, heavyweight setup
Too often we tax every small integration like it is Netflix-scale infrastructure.
Scripts that only you understand. One-off VMs. A Postgres instance for two hundred demo rows. Passing ZIP files named products_final_final.csv around Slack. These are developer problems—familiar, unglamorous, and totally fixable—yet the industry keeps selling you a platform when you asked for a URL that returns JSON.
API Butler takes the opposite bet: keep the surface almost insultingly simple, and let the careful work live under the hood— parsing edge cases, serving traffic, and giving you an endpoint your team can trust without a three-day architecture review.
How we think about the product
Simple for you, deliberate under the hood
The goal is not to impress you with dashboards—it is to remove the side quest between your data and a client that speaks HTTP. Everything else is optional depth.
HTTP you can reason about
Predictable verbs, URLs, JSON, and status codes—so your tools, scripts, and automation stay boring in the best way.
No ceremony for small data
When the source of truth is a CSV, standing up a full backend stack is often theater. The API should appear with almost nothing to configure.
Infrastructure that stays invisible
Parsing, serving, and guarding traffic should not become your weekend project. You keep the file; the platform handles the rest.
Docs and product in sync
If the dashboard changes, the developer experience should not drift. Clarity beats surprise—especially when you are on a deadline.
Peer feedback, not roadmap theatre
What ships is shaped by people who actually call the endpoints—feature requests that survive real CSVs and real integrations.
How the product evolves
Shipped from real endpoints, not hype
Priorities come from people who rely on the API day to day: clearer errors, better limits, safer defaults, documentation that matches production. If it does not hold up against messy CSVs and real consumers, it waits.
You will not get growth-theatre UX here—just direct channels, honest constraints, and steady iteration while the product stays easy to adopt.