BraceJSON — Privacy-first JSON workbench

About

BraceJSON is a privacy-first JSON workbench that runs entirely inside
your browser. Every operation happens on your machine — no JSON, no
file, no payload you handle is ever sent to a server.

WHAT IT DOES

• Auto-formats raw JSON pages. Visit any URL that returns JSON — an
  API response, a GitHub raw file, a webhook payload, a localhost
  endpoint — and BraceJSON replaces the page with a readable tree
  view, with search and secret-detection badges. A one-click "Open in
  workbench" handoff sends the JSON straight into the full editor.

• Format & validate. Clean indentation, precise line:column errors
  for invalid input.

• Repair broken JSON. Handles trailing commas, single quotes, smart
  quotes, unquoted keys, missing colons, mismatched brackets, JS-style
  comments, NaN/Infinity, and more. Conservative by design: if repair
  can't produce valid JSON, your input is left untouched.

• Detect & redact secrets. Built-in scanners for JWTs, AWS access
  keys, email addresses, Luhn-valid credit card numbers, and
  high-entropy values near sensitive keys (token, password, api_key).
  Add your own regex patterns for organization-specific secrets.

• Convert to YAML, XML, CSV, or TypeScript interface types.

• Diff two JSON documents semantically (by structure, not by text
  lines).

• Tree view with search on both the input and the output.

WHY "PRIVACY-FIRST"

BraceJSON was built around a single design choice: every operation
happens inside your browser, never on a server.

This isn't a promise on a webpage. It's enforced by a strict
Content-Security-Policy (connect-src 'none') that physically blocks
the extension from making any outbound network call. Verify it
yourself in 30 seconds with Chrome DevTools — open the Network tab,
paste any JSON, click every button. You'll see zero outbound requests.

WHAT IT STORES

Only your preferences, in your browser's local storage on this device:

• Theme preference (light or dark)
• Any custom secret-detection patterns you create
• Master on/off toggle for the auto-viewer
• Per-site exclusion list for the auto-viewer

Your JSON is never persisted. It lives only in the page while you're
using it.

WHAT IT COSTS

Free. No ads, no accounts, no analytics, no cookies, no newsletter.
Always.

USE CASES

• Debugging API responses without copying JSON into a third-party
  formatter
• Repairing malformed configuration files
• Spotting accidentally-exposed tokens before sharing payloads
• Converting between JSON and YAML / XML / CSV / TypeScript without
  leaving the browser
• Comparing two API responses semantically

PERMISSIONS, IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

• "Read your data on all websites": required so BraceJSON can detect
  raw JSON pages and replace them with the workbench view. The
  extension makes no outbound network requests — only inspects the
  current page's contents to render the formatted view in place.
• "Storage": stores your theme preference, custom patterns, and
  preferences. Local to your browser; never synced or transmitted.

Built and maintained by Vaibhav Pathak — an independent consultant with
a technical and IT delivery background. Side project, no monetization,
no roadmap-driven feature creep. Built to be a trustworthy and reliable
workbench for JSON that actually matters — the kind with real tokens,
real data, real stakes.

Website: https://bracejson.com