PortZero Documentation

PortZero is a local development reverse proxy, process manager, and traffic inspector built in Rust using Cloudflare Pingora as the proxy engine. It assigns stable <name>.localhost URLs to your dev servers, captures all HTTP traffic for inspection, and provides request replay, mocking, interception, and network simulation -- all from a single binary.

Why PortZero?

  • Single binary -- No Node.js, no Docker, no runtime dependencies. Just one ~8MB Rust binary.
  • Stable URLs -- Each app gets a predictable name.localhost:1337 URL instead of random ports.
  • Full observability -- Inspect every request and response, replay them, mock them, or simulate bad networks.
  • AI-native (coming soon) -- MCP server will let AI coding agents inspect traffic and manage apps.
  • Battle-tested proxy -- Powered by Cloudflare Pingora, the same engine behind Cloudflare's global network.

Quick Example

# Start a dev server with a stable URL
portzero next dev
# => http://my-app.localhost:1337

# Start multiple apps from a config file
portzero up
# => http://web.localhost:1337
# => http://api.localhost:1337

What's in the docs

  • Getting Started -- Installation and first steps
  • CLI Reference -- Every command explained
  • Configuration -- The portzero.toml file
  • Features -- Traffic inspector, replay, mocking, network simulation, and schema inference
  • API Reference -- REST and WebSocket API
  • MCP Server -- AI agent integration (coming soon)
  • Desktop App -- Tauri v2 native dashboard
  • Architecture -- How PortZero is built