The story behind Rockxy

Why we built it, what we think it should be, and what you can verify in public before you trust it with your traffic.

Why Rockxy exists

Every macOS developer who works with HTTP APIs hits the same wall. Charles Proxy is a Java app that looks and feels foreign on a Mac. Proxyman is native but closed-source, which means you cannot audit what it does with your traffic or extend it for your workflow. Browser DevTools only see traffic from that browser — they miss system services, CLI tools, and background processes entirely.

We wanted a debugging proxy that is native to macOS, auditable in public, and straightforward to evaluate before installing. Rockxy is our attempt to build that tool.

What Rockxy is

Rockxy is a complete local debugging workstation for macOS. It captures HTTP, HTTPS, WebSocket, and GraphQL-over-HTTP traffic from any application on your Mac. You can apply rules to redirect, block, or throttle requests. Set breakpoints to pause and edit requests or responses mid-flight. Replay requests with modifications. Compare two captured transactions side by side in the diff view. Write JavaScript scripts to automate traffic manipulation. Save and share full debug sessions.

It runs as a native macOS app built with SwiftUI and AppKit — not Electron, not Java, not a browser extension. The proxy engine is built on SwiftNIO for high-throughput, low-latency traffic handling. The request list uses a virtual-scrolling NSTableView that handles 100,000+ requests without lag.

And we built an MCP server so Claude Desktop and other AI coding assistants can read captured traffic directly on your Mac.

What you can verify publicly

Source and license

The code is public on GitHub under AGPL-3.0, so you can inspect the implementation and the license terms yourself.

Privacy model

The privacy policy is public, the app runs locally on macOS, and the HTTPS interception model is documented for review.

Releases and checksums

Versioned GitHub releases, release notes, and checksums are published in public so you can evaluate each build on its own merits.

Issue history and changelog

Bugs, fixes, and release history are visible in the issue tracker and changelog instead of hidden behind support channels.

Built with

Swift SwiftNIO SwiftUI AppKit swift-certificates swift-crypto swift-nio-ssl SQLite.swift JavaScriptCore