About Toolstead

Toolstead is a small collection of browser-based developer tools. The first is a Base64 ⇄ image converter that refuses to give up on input other tools reject; more tools will follow, and they all follow the same rules: no upload, no account, no tracking. It exists because debugging a Base64 payload should not require writing a script.

How it is built

There is no backend and there are no third-party runtime dependencies. Every tool here is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, served as static files. Decoding uses the browser's own atob and Blob APIs; encoding uses FileReader. Large payloads are handed to a Web Worker so the interface stays responsive.

What that means for you

Your data never leaves your browser. There is no upload endpoint to inspect because none exists, and you can confirm this in the DevTools Network panel. The site also installs as a PWA, so once it has loaded it keeps working without a network connection — useful when you are debugging against an internal service.

What it does not do

No accounts, no stored history, no analytics that follow you across sites, and no advertising at the time of writing. When advertising is introduced, the privacy policy will describe exactly what is placed and how to opt out.

Limitations worth knowing

A Base64 string carries no checksum, so a truncated payload cannot always be detected as truncated. Where the tool can tell — a length that is not a multiple of four, or a signature that decodes but will not render — it says so explicitly. Where it cannot, it reports the decoded byte count so you can compare it against the source.