curlie

Curlie is a thin frontend over curl that accepts HTTPie-style request items while preserving almost all of curl's flags. It is built for one-shot HTTP and API work where shorter request syntax and nicer terminal output help more than a higher-level client abstraction.

• Send ad hoc HTTP requests with METHOD URL, header:value, query==value, and field=value syntax while still passing curl flags for auth, TLS, proxies, retries, uploads, and transfer control.
• Inspect API responses with pretty-printed JSON bodies, colored headers on stderr, and separate body output on stdout that can still be piped into other shell steps.
• Print the exact underlying curl command with --curl to debug a request or turn an exploratory step into a plain curl invocation.

• Useful when an agent wants curl's mature transport features but a shorter surface for composing one-off HTTP requests.
• Machine-readability is limited: the project does not expose a structured output mode, and JSON support is only terminal formatting layered on top of whatever the server returns.
• Automation needs explicit flags because defaults are terminal-oriented; non-TTY stdin is treated as request input and header or URL diagnostics are written to stderr.

• Curlie executes the local curl binary, so available protocol features and some behavior depend on the curl version installed on the host.
• The nicest output path is interactive terminal use; pretty printing and header rendering are optimized for human inspection rather than clean machine parsing.