--- title: Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts... description: Postman's desktop app silently installed plugins into Codex and Claude Code without user consent, a GitHub issue reports. Postman's own log shows an... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/postman-silently-auto-installs-ai-plugins-and-attempts-to-share-all-api-data-9wqvbcblh twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data | daily.dev og:description: Postman's desktop app silently installed plugins into Codex and Claude Code without user consent, a GitHub issue reports. Postman's own log shows an... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/postman-silently-auto-installs-ai-plugins-and-attempts-to-share-all-api-data-9wqvbcblh og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/9WqVbcbLH.png og:image:alt: Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Postman's desktop app silently installed plugins into Codex and Claude Code without user consent, a GitHub issue reports. Postman's own log shows an 'auto-existing-upgrade' event installing both agent plugins. The Codex plugin also added a startup hook instructing the agent to load a 'postman:api-engineer' skill for any API engineering task, and the installer code calls a function that approves its own hook's trust hash. A remote MCP connection to mcp.postman.com was enabled too, though it failed authentication. Affected versions: Postman desktop 12.33.4, Codex plugin 1.1.0, Claude plugin 2.0.1. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why is Codex automatically loading a Postman skill for API tasks without me asking for it? Postman desktop (version 12.33.4) can silently install a Codex plugin via an 'auto-existing-upgrade' process, which writes a SessionStart hook into ~/.codex/config.toml. That hook instructs Codex to load the 'postman:api-engineer' skill before handling any non-trivial API engineering task, not just when Postman is explicitly requested, and the plugin's own installer code approves the hook's trust hash itself. _Anyone auditing unexpected agent behavior can track incidents like this hook hijack on daily.dev._ ### How do I remove the Postman plugin and hook trust that got auto-installed into Codex and Claude Code? A full removal needs to cover agent configs, hook trust records, plugin marketplaces, caches, MCP connections, and a separately installed CLI binary. On macOS this touches ~/.codex/config.toml, ~/.claude/settings.json and ~/.claude/plugins/installed_plugins.json, plus a Postman executable placed in ~/.local/bin, since no single uninstall path was confirmed to clean all of these. _Developers cleaning up unwanted agent integrations can follow security write-ups like this one on daily.dev._ ### Is the Postman remote MCP server actually authenticated when it gets auto-enabled in Codex? No. The auto-added MCP configuration points Codex at https://mcp.postman.com/mcp, but Codex logs show the server startup failing with 'Auth required, when send initialize request', meaning the connection was enabled without a working authenticated session. _Teams vetting MCP integrations before enabling them can follow reports like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 154 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-11-03). **TL;DR:** The discussion is dominated not by the specific plugin-installation incident but by broader disgust at Postman's trajectory from a lightweight dev tool into a bloated, VC-funded, enshittified SaaS platform, with most commenters saying they've already abandoned it for alternatives like Bruno, Insomnia, or Yaak. **Sentiment:** 2% positive · 8% mixed · 90% skeptical **The pushback** - Postman has repeatedly pushed forced logins, cloud sync of schemas/secrets, subscriptions, and now unwanted AI features, eroding trust. - Several organizations report banning or decertifying Postman entirely due to data-security and compliance concerns. - Many feel Postman's core functionality is trivial (a GUI over curl) and doesn't justify its scale, funding, or valuation. - Insomnia is cited as having gone down a similar path by requiring cloud accounts, making people wary that any monetized alternative (even Bruno or Yaak) could enshittify too. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Commenters largely vent about Postman's decline into a bloated, VC-driven platform and recommend switching to lighter, local-first alternatives like Bruno, Insomnia, or Yaak. **Hottest debate:** Whether building developer tools as VC-backed businesses inevitably leads to enshittification, versus the view that engineers deserve to be paid for useful software. **Open questions** - Will alternative tools like Bruno or Yaak eventually enshittify the same way Postman and Insomnia did? - Is there a sustainable business model for simple developer tools that doesn't require aggressive data collection or forced accounts? **Highlights** > It's a shame what happened to Postman. It started as an excellent little developer tool for testing APIs. Then for some reason they raised over $400M in funding and hired 1,500+ employees, for what should have been a tiny OSS/passion project like curl or little snitch. Instead they now have to justify their valuation by forcing logins, collecting data, monthly subscriptions, AI features, etc. I still don't know how they're valued at $5B+ when I don't know a single developer who actually uses it anymore > — [pants2 on hackernews · 24 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50355299) > > for some reason they raised over $400M in funding and hired 1,500+ employees You know the reason. A bunch of people were able to take home a lot of money because of that growth and now have the option to FIRE themselves whenever they want to shake off the stress. That's the founder mentality that Y Combinator exists to leverage or encourage and it's ubiquity is what separates the prevailing 21st century technology movement from the nerdy, academic, UNIX-y movement that gave us GNU, linux, curl, ffmpeg, redis, etc We got to watch innovative products get pumped full of helium until they explode with bloat and rent-seeking instead of accumulating a growing foundation of sturdy technical building blocks as we could have had on the other path. AI now leads us into some new movement, the worst version of which a few model vendors protected by regulations absorb almost all technical accomplishment and lease it back out to everybody else, and the best version of which democratizes technical construction so widely that individuals can naively spin up effective solutions for the most idiosyncratic needs. We'll see how it goes. > — [swatcoder on hackernews · 7 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50355650) > > I don't understand how postman became the tool that it is today. You can’t have a unicorn valuation built on a simple offline client. This is basically standard SV play book - first step is „fix“ it to have a cloud component/account. Then store some of the data in cloud only - say for example for team sharing or a „workspace“. Then make some features paid only. Then ramp up the enshitification till metrics show it’s saturated and users will bear no more > — [Havoc on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50356184) > Working in healthcare, and Postman got decertified by our Cyber team for this. We all switched to Bruno overnight. Their sales team is pinging us like gangbusters though. > — [bottombutton on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50356050) > Yep! Fun fact, I made Insomnia too, and started over with Yaak after I sold it and watched it go down the same path. Yaak was my attempt at making sure it doesn't happen again. > — [gschier on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50355954) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50354960) · 369 points · 154 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [7 Claude Code Plugins From the Marketplace Worth Your Time](https://daily.dev/posts/7-claude-code-plugins-from-the-marketplace-worth-your-time-q7jabdyhu) · Security Boulevard · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [StepSecurity Now Inventories AI Agent Plugins in Your GitHub Repositories and on Developer Machines](https://daily.dev/posts/stepsecurity-now-inventories-ai-agent-plugins-in-your-github-repositories-and-on-developer-machines-siwkedecn) · StepSecurity · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Claude Code has an MCP security problem — and your developers are already using it](https://daily.dev/posts/claude-code-has-an-mcp-security-problem-and-your-developers-are-already-using-it-p4ennanew) · CSO Online · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Plugin Was Trusted. The Code Wasn’t.](https://daily.dev/posts/the-plugin-was-trusted-the-code-wasn-t--ob4senb1p) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code), [#openai-codex](https://daily.dev/tags/openai-codex), [#postman](https://daily.dev/tags/postman) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/postman-silently-auto-installs-ai-plugins-and-attempts-to-share-all-api-data-9wqvbcblh) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/postman-silently-auto-installs-ai-plugins-and-attempts-to-share-all-api-data-9wqvbcblh","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/postman-silently-auto-installs-ai-plugins-and-attempts-to-share-all-api-data-9wqvbcblh"},"datePublished":"2026-11-03T17:49:06.029Z","dateModified":"2026-11-03T23:48:25.921Z","description":"Postman's desktop app silently installed plugins into Codex and Claude Code without user consent, a GitHub issue reports. 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