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.
I have the Extended Support Release 115.17.0esr (64-bit) GNU IceCat gnu - 1.0 on my old intel mac and the nytpu.com displays fine, HN does too with hn.js blocked by LibreJS
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.
- `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
I made https://addr.fyi to return various information about IP addresses in plaintext.
(also I have comically strict rate limits in place, so you probably don't want to use this. it's also running out of my basement)
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...
An RFC exists that discourages the “x-“ naming, but it’s still very much in use in the wild.
CVE-2026-92392
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/10/07/twenty-two-pending-cu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_(protocol)
Good Browser.