REST API

The March 2026 updates for Postman signify a radical shift from its origins as a focused API testing client toward an all-encompassing platform. Key additions such as AI Agent Builders, managed MCP Servers, and integrated terminals aim to transform Postman into a centralized hub for AI-powered API development. However, these changes raise significant concerns regarding feature bloat, performance degradation, and UI complexity. The transition toward a cloud-first model suggests a strategy of vendor lock-in, potentially stifling innovation by moving core business logic into a proprietary ecosystem. To maintain architectural independence and control, developers are encouraged to weigh the risks of dependency on third-party infrastructure against the simplicity of lightweight, open-source alternatives for API verification.

WARN Firehose is a comprehensive platform that scrapes, unifies, and normalizes WARN Act layoff notices from all 50 US states. Providing a searchable database of over 109,000 notices since 1998, it offers a REST API, bulk exports in CSV, JSON, and Parquet, and an MCP server for AI integration to support developers, researchers, and recruitment.

In the tech industry, WebSockets are often the default choice for real-time features, yet they introduce unnecessary complexity for most applications. Approximately 95% of real-time use cases—such as dashboards, notifications, live feeds, and AI streaming responses—only require unidirectional server-to-client updates. Server-Sent Events (SSE) offer a superior, lightweight alternative that functions over standard HTTP, providing built-in auto-reconnection and seamless compatibility with firewalls and proxies. While WebSockets remain essential for high-frequency bidirectional needs like multiplayer gaming or collaborative editing, SSE delivers comparable performance with significantly less overhead. Adopting SSE simplifies architecture, enhances scalability via HTTP/2, and leverages existing infrastructure and debugging tools like curl. Choosing the simplest tool for the job often leads to more reliable and maintainable systems.