| 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":"agentos-original","license":"MIT"} |
| 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_bytes if 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 (via sub-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.
