Zero npm installs: I built a 40-page developer toolbox that loads in milliseconds
I needed to decode a JWT last week. I searched, clicked the first result, and got a login wall. The second site wanted me to "create a free account" to see my own token's payload. The third one was a 4MB React bundle that showed a spinner for three seconds before rendering a text box. So I did what developers do when annoyed enough: I built my own. DevUtils is now 40 pages, 19 tools, one shared…
I recently needed to decode a JSON Web Token (JWT). My search led me to two websites, both requiring a login and a few seconds of waiting before revealing the token's contents. Frustrated, I decided to create my own toolbox. DevUtils is a collection of 19 tools, organized across 40 pages and totaling about 120KB when compressed. Notably, it has zero npm dependencies.
The primary rule guiding the development of DevUtils was that all tools must run entirely in the browser, with no server-side components, external API calls, or analytics. This constraint eliminated the need for complex build processes, framework updates, or supply chain management. Each tool is contained within its own HTML file, allowing for independent caching and extremely fast load times.
Three tools within the toolbox required custom implementation due to lack of corresponding browser APIs:
1. An MD5 hash generator, which I implemented from scratch following the RFC 1321 specification. This involved about 70 lines of bitwise operations.
2. A Markdown parser, a ~100-line program that converts Markdown to HTML. To ensure safety, it first escapes all HTML before applying Markdown structure.
3. A CSV parser that adheres to the RFC 4180 standard, handling complex quoting and escaping scenarios to ensure correct conversion to JSON.
The toolbox includes a wide range of utilities, from JSON formatting and regex testing to JWT decoding, Base64 encoding, timestamp conversion, UUID generation, color manipulation, password creation, and text comparison. It also features reference pages such as regex cheat sheets.
All source code for DevUtils is openly available under the MIT license. The site is designed to be self-hosted, with future plans to explore analytics options that respect user privacy. The community is invited to share their own zero-dependency tools and discuss the benefits of building components from scratch.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
