API testing

Every collection in Elva doubles as a request workbench: fire real HTTP requests at any endpoint straight from the browser and read the live response in milliseconds. A hardened server-side proxy does the sending, so you can hit private staging APIs without fighting CORS, and without leaking a thing.

From reading docs to sending requests in one click

The usual testing ritual is a context-switch tax: copy a curl command, export to another tool, recreate auth in a local environment, and hope the docs you copied from were current. In Elva there is nothing to set up. Open any endpoint in the catalog, and the request panel is already there, built from the same spec you are reading. Pick a server, fill the blanks, hit send.

What the workbench gives you

• Real requests, real responses. This is not a mock or a sandbox. The proxy sends actual HTTP to your live or staging server, and you get back the real status, headers, body, and timing.
• Spec-aware by default. Parameters, headers, and body fields are scaffolded from the endpoint's own schema, so a valid request is the starting point, not an achievement.
• The proxy does the dirty work. Requests are sent server-side, which means no CORS fights in the browser and no need to expose private staging hosts to the public internet.
• Credentials that stay yours. Auth is attached at send time and never baked into anything shareable. Testing an authenticated endpoint does not mean pasting keys into docs.

Why testing lives inside the catalog

Standalone API clients drift out of sync with reality because they live apart from the source of truth. In Elva, the request panel is rendered from the same living spec as the docs, the quality score, and the MCP tools, so when a request fails you are one click from the schema line that is wrong, and when you fix the spec the workbench updates with it. It is also the exact surface your agents will call: the endpoint you just exercised by hand is the same one the MCP runtime turns into a tool, which makes a green response here the fastest possible preview of an agent call working in production.

Try it on your own API

Import a spec, connect a repo, or point Elva at a URL, and every endpoint arrives with its workbench attached. Your first real request is a few minutes away at app.getelva.ai.