curl-http

What This Skill Does

The curl-http skill provides the OpenClaw agent with a powerful, command-line-driven interface for interacting with web services, APIs, and remote servers. By wrapping the industry-standard 'curl' utility, this skill allows the agent to perform virtually any HTTP-based operation, ranging from simple resource retrieval to complex multi-part file uploads and authenticated API management. It serves as the primary bridge between the agent and the external web, enabling the automation of data fetching, service integration, and connectivity testing.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/arnarsson/curl-http

Ensure that the underlying 'curl' binary is available in your system's PATH, as the skill relies on the system environment to execute requests.

Use Cases

This skill is indispensable for developers and system administrators. Common use cases include:

• Automated API Testing: Validating endpoints and verifying payload responses dynamically.
• Resource Synchronization: Fetching remote configuration files, binary assets, or datasets for further processing.
• Monitoring and Maintenance: Checking service uptime using HEAD requests and inspecting server headers for diagnostic insights.
• Secure Data Exchange: Handling sensitive communications via Bearer tokens, Basic Authentication, or custom X-API-Key headers.
• Proxy and Tunneling: Routing requests through internal corporate proxies or SOCKS tunnels to access gated infrastructure.

Example Prompts

1. "Perform a GET request on https://api.service.com/status and show me the response headers to verify the server configuration."
2. "Use curl to POST this JSON payload {'action': 'reboot'} to https://internal-api.local/v1/control and set a timeout of 5 seconds."
3. "Fetch the file at https://downloads.example.com/data.zip and save it locally as current_data.zip."

Tips & Limitations

When using this skill, always prioritize security; never expose sensitive authentication tokens in logs or shared chat history. Use the --max-time and --connect-timeout flags to prevent the agent from hanging on unresponsive servers. Note that while this tool is excellent for data transmission, it does not interpret HTML or execute JavaScript—it is purely for raw network-layer communication. For complex scraping involving dynamic browser rendering, consider pairing this with a headless browser skill.