Add httptap to Debugging Tools

[ozeranskii]

Project

httptap

Checklist

• One project per PR
• PR title format: Add project-name
• Entry format: - [project-name](url) - Description ending with period.
• Description is concise and short

Why This Project Is Awesome

Which criterion does it meet? (pick one)

• Industry Standard - The go-to tool for a specific use case
• Rising Star - 5000+ stars in < 2 years, significant adoption
• Hidden Gem - Exceptional quality, solves niche problems elegantly

Explain:

httptap solves one narrowly-scoped problem every backend developer eventually hits: "my API is slow — where is the time going?" It dissects a single HTTP request into DNS resolution, TCP connect, TLS handshake, server wait (TTFB), and body transfer phases, and renders the timings as a Rich waterfall, a compact single-line summary, or machine-readabl key=value metrics — whichever fits the context.

Signals of real-world maturity despite a modest star count (485 ⭐ in 6 months):

• PyPI releases (https://pypi.org/project/httptap/) with automated SLSA v1.0 build provenance and Sigstore keyless signing — verifiable via gh attestation verify.
• OpenSSF Best Practices silver (project 12474) and OpenSSF Scorecard ~9/10: pinned dependencies, strict token permissions, CodeQL SAST, signed releases.
• Full docs site at https://docs.httptap.dev — getting-started, API reference, troubleshooting, assurance case.
• Clean Python API (httptap.HTTPTapAnalyzer) with Protocol interfaces for DNS, TLS, timing, visualizer, and exporter — usable programmatically, not CLI-only.
• Production-oriented output modes: --json for post-hoc analysis, --metrics-only for log pipelines, per-step timings for redirect chains.
• curl-compatible flag aliases (-X, -L, -k, -x, -H) so it drops into existing shell scripts.

Repository is ~6 months old (created 2025-10-22) with consistent weekly commits and 30+ commits in the last 90 days.

How It Differs

Existing entries in HTTP Clients (aiohttp, httpx, requests, urllib3, furl) are general-purpose libraries for issuing requests — none break a request down into per-phase timings. Existing entries in
Debugging Tools (py-spy, scalene, pudb, etc.) profile CPU, memory, or control flow of Python code — none profile the network phases of an HTTP exchange.

httptap fills the gap between these two categories: it is a diagnostic / debugging tool specifically for HTTP request latency (DNS → TCP → TLS → TTFB → transfer), which is a recurring source of production
incidents that general HTTP clients cannot diagnose and general profilers cannot see. Closest conceptual sibling outside Python is httpstat (a curl wrapper) or curl -w, both non-Python and without a library
API.

This is why it is proposed under Debugging Tools → Network (new subcategory) rather than HTTP Clients.