IT-Tools

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 967 words

IT-Tools is the easiest self-hosted app in this directory: one container, no volumes, no database, no config file, and it idles at well under the 128 MB the catalogue lists. Everything runs in your browser, which means the reason to host it is not the one people assume. The public instance at it-tools.tech already never sends your data anywhere. What self-hosting buys you is control over the JavaScript you paste secrets into, an instance that works on a LAN with no internet, and a tile on your dashboard that your whole team uses instead of 20 different ad-covered "online JSON formatter" sites.

One command, nothing to back up

There is no state. The container serves a static Vue build on port 80 and that is the entire architecture:

docker run -d --name it-tools --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 8080:80 corentinth/it-tools:latest

Open http://your-host:8080 and you are done. No admin account, no first-run wizard, no database migration, and nothing to include in your backup job. Updating is docker pull and recreate. If you want it in a compose stack alongside the rest of your homelab, the compose patterns post covers how I lay out throwaway services like this one next to the ones that hold data.

Because the app is fully client-side, you can also serve it from the same reverse proxy as everything else with a two-line Caddy site block and get HTTPS for free. HTTPS matters more than it looks: the clipboard and crypto APIs the tools rely on are only available in secure contexts, so a plain-HTTP instance on a hostname other than localhost will have some tools quietly fail their copy buttons.

The trust argument is about JavaScript, not network traffic

Every tool in IT-Tools computes locally. The JWT decoder, the bcrypt hasher, the RSA key generator, the text encrypter: none of them make a request. So when someone says "self-host it so your tokens don't leave your machine", they are half right. On the public site, your tokens do not leave your machine either. What leaves your control is the code. A hosted page can be changed under you, and the browser will happily run whatever it is served today.

Running your own instance pins that. You pull a specific image tag, it serves the same bundle until you change it, and the whole thing works with the machine's network cable unplugged. For a solo developer that is a mild nicety. For a team that has a written rule about not pasting production credentials into random websites, it is the difference between a rule people follow and a rule people work around.

The utilities that earn the tile

The catalogue says "dozens of dev utilities", and the count has been climbing since the project appeared in 2022. The ones I open most, in rough order:

• Token and UUID/ULID generators, with length and character-set sliders.
• Hash text (MD5 through SHA-512) and bcrypt compare, for checking what a config file actually stores.
• JWT parser, which shows header, payload, and expiry without any round trip.
• docker run to compose converter, which pays for the whole install the first time you inherit a run command from a README.
• Crontab generator and chmod calculator, because nobody remembers either syntax.
• JSON and SQL prettifiers, YAML to JSON, and a text diff.
• IPv4 subnet calculator and MAC address lookup for the networking side of a homelab.
• QR code generator for getting a Wi-Fi password or URL onto a phone.

The search box at the top is the interface. Type "base64", hit Enter, and you are in the tool. It also supports a favourites list, stored in the browser's local storage, which is the only persistence the app has anywhere.

What it deliberately is not

IT-Tools is listed as an alternative to CyberChef, and the overlap is real, but the products aim at different people. CyberChef chains operations into recipes: decode base64, then gunzip, then extract IPs, then defang them, saved as a shareable link. It is the tool for forensics and CTF work. IT-Tools gives you one operation per page with a clean input and a clean output. If you need pipelines, run both; they are equally cheap.

The two cons in the catalogue are honest. There is no persistence, so a snippet you formatted yesterday is gone unless you saved it yourself, and the scope is utilities only. It will not become a pastebin, a notes app, or an API client, and the maintainer has resisted turning it into one.

Put it on the dashboard, not behind SSO

My one operational opinion: do not bother wrapping IT-Tools in an authentication layer. There is nothing to protect on the server, the pages hold no data, and a login prompt in front of a UUID generator is the sort of friction that sends people back to the ad-covered sites you were trying to replace. Give it a friendly hostname, a dashboard icon, and leave it open on the LAN or behind your VPN. The rest of the dev-tools category has plenty of apps that do need a login; this is not one of them.

What I'd do

Run the command above on whatever box already hosts your dashboard, give it tools.home.lan through the existing reverse proxy, and pin the image tag so the bundle only changes when you decide it should. Total cost is about 50 MB of image and a few minutes. If your team already has a habit of pasting tokens into whichever site ranks first, this is the cheapest habit fix available.