Very neat! It's also possible to do this 100% statically without checking the user agent, by using alternate terminal buffers:
- `curl -L https://cole.ws` (my personal portfolio site) does this
It embeds the actual HTML inside an alternate terminal buffer (starting with `<!--\x1b[?1049h-->\r` and ending with `<!--\x1b[?1049l\x1b[3D\r`), and has the curl-able content appended to the end.
When you curl it, it still writes the HTML to your terminal, but immediately clears that buffer and writes the ANSI version to your real screen. In browsers, this ANSI stuff is hidden in an HTML comment. This is useful for static sites on GitHub pages or something.
Something like Emails ?
They can have both text and html version, its the client capabilities that determine what gets rendered like in cli mutt it will show text body, while gmail app/browser with rich documemt capability can render html
>If you were just trying to download the original HTML version of this page, add -H "X-Original: true" to the curl command to have the server respond exactly how it would've to any non-curl HTTP client.
It seems like "Accept: text/html" would be more standard
I think these are very fun and I would love to see more content you can visit with curl. I'm setting up a home chores + calendar + weather station that runs off my homeserver. I was contemplating making a plaintext version so very stupid devices could still read and display interesting data.
Very neat! It's also possible to do this 100% statically without checking the user agent, by using alternate terminal buffers:
It embeds the actual HTML inside an alternate terminal buffer (starting with `<!--\x1b[?1049h-->\r` and ending with `<!--\x1b[?1049l\x1b[3D\r`), and has the curl-able content appended to the end.When you curl it, it still writes the HTML to your terminal, but immediately clears that buffer and writes the ANSI version to your real screen. In browsers, this ANSI stuff is hidden in an HTML comment. This is useful for static sites on GitHub pages or something.
Something like Emails ? They can have both text and html version, its the client capabilities that determine what gets rendered like in cli mutt it will show text body, while gmail app/browser with rich documemt capability can render html
Fun! I also did something similar with my personal website this summer:
- `curl listening.cailinpitt.com` shows what music I've been listening to recently
- `curl reading.cailinpitt.com` shows what books and articles I've been reading recently
hey that's pretty curl
>If you were just trying to download the original HTML version of this page, add -H "X-Original: true" to the curl command to have the server respond exactly how it would've to any non-curl HTTP client.
It seems like "Accept: text/html" would be more standard
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/...
... and then use `text/x-ansi` as the curl version, so other text-based clients could also fetch it:
wget -O - --header='Accept: text/x-ansi' nytpu.com/gemlog/2026-03-18
See: https://www.digipres.org/formats/sources/wikidata/formats/#q...
Yeah, I like this more. I want curl/wget to get the canonical representation by default.
text/x-ansi is real? Wild
FYI it works just fine on Windows if you run it from Terminal instead. As long as you don't use PowerShell mode in it.
I think these are very fun and I would love to see more content you can visit with curl. I'm setting up a home chores + calendar + weather station that runs off my homeserver. I was contemplating making a plaintext version so very stupid devices could still read and display interesting data.
Also germane today a fix for curl/libcurl was released. The main vulnerability hinges upon using a malicious server to attack the client.
CVE-2026-92392
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/10/07/twenty-two-pending-cu...
Finger lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_(protocol)
Not quite the same, but shameless plug for my polyglot website with a `curl | sh` mode: https://trey.sh
Does it help make your website more accessible to agents browsing the web?
unlikely
Awesome! I always wanted to try browsing the web like RMS ;)
Jokes aside, RMS browses the web on GNU IceCat (Firefox fork), with the LibreJS extension on
curl wttr.in !