By name: http-fetch
description: "Fetch a URL via HTTP/HTTPS and return the response body as text. Lightweight entrypoint replacement for sub-agent steps whose only job is a single GET/POST. Supports GET (default), POST/PUT/DELETE with a stdin-piped body, configurable timeout, and a max-bytes cap — no LLM agent loop, no custom-header injection (request goes out with urllib defaults). Use for simple data-fetch steps in meta-skill DAGs; for crawling, JS-rendered pages, or complex auth chains use sub-agent + scrapling instead."
provenance:
origin: opensquilla-original
license: Apache-2.0
metadata:
requires:
anyBins: ["python", "python3"]
entrypoint:
command: python {baseDir}/scripts/http_fetch.py
args:
- --url
- "{{ with.url }}"
- --method
- "{{ with.method | default('GET') }}"
- --timeout
- "{{ with.timeout | default(30) }}"
- --max-bytes
- "{{ with.max_bytes | default(2000000) }}"
stdin: "{{ with.body | default('') }}"
parse: text
timeout: 60
http-fetch (sub-skill)
Direct shell wrapper for a single HTTP request. Replaces
sub-agent sub-Agent steps that just GET/POST a URL — order-of-
magnitude faster (no LLM round-trip, no tool surface, no iteration
loop).
Inputs (with:)
| key | required | default | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
url |
yes | — | absolute http(s) URL |
method |
no | GET |
GET / POST / PUT / DELETE (case-insensitive) |
body |
no | '' |
request body, piped via stdin (for POST/PUT); empty = no body |
timeout |
no | 30 |
request timeout in seconds |
max_bytes |
no | 2000000 |
response body cap; larger payloads truncated + suffixed … |
Output
- Success: response body on stdout (UTF-8 decoded, truncated to
max_bytesif larger; lossy decode replaces invalid bytes). - Non-2xx response: exit 1, stderr
HTTP <code>: <reason> <body[:200]>; stdout still carries the body for callers that want to inspect. - Network / DNS / timeout failure: exit 2, stderr cause.
When NOT to use
- Crawling multiple pages → use
scrapling(viasub-agent). - JS-rendered pages → use
sub-agent+ browser tools. - OAuth dance / multi-step auth → use
sub-agent. - Streaming responses → not supported (we buffer + return).
Fallback
If this skill is unavailable, callers should spawn sub-agent
with a curl/requests task — same result, ~10× the latency and a
non-deterministic tool loop.