Core concepts

A short tour of the model behind TruSpec. Once these click, the file format and CLI read as a thin surface over a few ideas.

---

The four principles

Everything in TruSpec follows from four commitments:

1. Open-source first — no feature paywalls, no mandatory account.
2. Local-first — everything works offline; your files are the source of truth.
3. Agent-native — every capability is reachable three ways: plain files, a --json CLI, and an MCP server. No capability is locked behind a GUI.
4. Refuse bloat — speed and focus are the product. Dashboards, flow builders, mandatory cloud sync, and exotic protocols are deliberately out.

---

Collections are plain text

A collection is a folder of YAML files. There is no binary database, no proprietary export format, and no hidden state — the files are the collection.

File	Purpose
<name>.tspec.yaml	One HTTP request, its assertions, and its spec link.
folder.tspec.yaml	Config inherited by every request in that folder and below.
environments/<name>.env.yaml	Variables and secret names for one environment.

Because they're plain text, they diff cleanly in Git, review well in a pull request, and can be authored by a human, a script, or an AI agent with equal ease. The hard rule that makes this work: TruSpec validates before it writes, so a malformed file never lands in your repo.

---

The spec is the source of truth

Most API clients treat the collection as the canonical artifact and the spec (if any) as a side note. TruSpec inverts that: your OpenAPI document is the source of truth, and the collection is measured against it.

A request links back to a spec operation with a spec: block:

spec:
  operation: "GET /pets/{id}"   # `${METHOD} ${path}`
  operationId: getPetById       # preferred when present

That link powers two checks that run offline and in CI:

• Drift — what's in the spec but untracked by any request, what's referenced but no longer in the spec, and what's matched but no longer satisfies the spec (e.g. a now-required parameter).
• Coverage — what share of spec operations are actually exercised by a request with assertions.

This is the feature that distinguishes TruSpec: your collection can't silently rot away from your API, because the build fails the moment it does.

---

The workspace

The workspace is the root TruSpec resolves environments and folder config from. You never configure it explicitly — it's discovered by walking up the directory tree from the request you're running until it finds a directory containing an environments/ folder or a .git directory.

That means a collection nested anywhere inside your repo still resolves the right environments, and a root .env is found regardless of which subfolder you run.

---

Folder inheritance

folder.tspec.yaml files compose from the workspace root down to the request's folder. Deeper files win. This lets you set a base URL or shared headers once:

# api/folder.tspec.yaml
name: My API
baseUrl: "{{baseUrl}}"
headers:
  Accept: application/json
auth:
  type: bearer
  token: "{{token}}"

Merge rules:

• baseUrl, auth, name — the deepest value replaces shallower ones.
• headers — merged key by key (a child can add or override individual headers).
• At request time, the request's own headers/auth/url win over inherited config, and a relative request url is joined onto the inherited baseUrl.

See File format → Folder config for the full rules.

---

Variables and secrets

Any string can contain {{name}} templates, resolved at run time. Values come from several sources, resolved in this order (later wins):

1. variables: in the active environment file.
2. Secrets declared by name in the environment, resolved from a workspace .env file and then from real OS environment variables (OS wins).
3. Values captured from earlier requests in the same run.

Secrets are never stored in your files — the environment lists only their names:

# environments/staging.env.yaml
name: staging
variables:
  baseUrl: "https://api.staging.example.com"
secrets:
  - token        # value comes from $token (OS env) or a .env file, never from here

When a run reports its results, declared secret values are masked with *** in URLs, bodies, headers, captured values, and error messages — so --json output and CI logs don't leak them. See File format → Environments.

---

How a run flows

When you truspec run, each request goes through the same pipeline:

parse → pre-script → resolve → fetch → assert → capture → post-script

1. Parse the YAML and validate it against the schema.
2. Pre-request script (optional) runs first and can set variables. See Scripting.
3. Resolve — interpolate {{variables}}, apply folder inheritance, build auth headers, assemble the query string and body into a concrete HTTP request. Unresolved variables fail the request before anything is sent.
4. Fetch the request (default 30s timeout; response body capped to guard memory).
5. Assert — evaluate the declarative assertions against the response.
6. Capture — save response values into variables for later requests.
7. Post-response script (optional) can add assertions and capture more values.

Requests in a directory run in order (ascending, then by file path), so a login can capture a token the next request consumes. The run exits non-zero if any request fails — which is what makes the same command work locally and as a CI gate.

---

The engine, the CLI, and the agent surface

The same engine powers every entry point, so behavior is identical no matter how you drive it:

@truspec/core  — the engine (pure TypeScript)
  ├─ format      parse / serialize / validate (+ published JSON Schema)
  ├─ runner      interpolation, auth, fetch, declarative assertions, scripts
  ├─ workspace   discovery, folder inheritance, env + secret resolution
  ├─ spec        OpenAPI drift + coverage + response contract validation
  ├─ importers   Postman v2.1 + Bruno → .tspec.yaml
  └─ mock        local mock server generated from a spec
truspec              — the CLI
@truspec/mcp-server  — the agent surface (11 MCP tools)
@truspec/web         — the local web UI (truspec serve)

Run it from your terminal, your CI, your editor, or your AI agent — it's the same code underneath. Read on:

• File format — the complete schema reference.
• CLI — every command and flag.
• Programmatic API — drive the engine from TypeScript.