Perform an HTTP request and return a compact schema of the response, not the full body.

Default flow (use this for any non-trivial response): (1) call http_request to get { schema, cache_id }; (2) call http_read with cache_id and a jq mask to extract only the field(s) you need. This keeps your context small even on multi-MB responses.

body_mode controls how much of the body comes back inline: schema (no body — schema only) head (schema + truncated preview of arrays/strings — middle ground) inline (schema + full body — costly; capped by PEEK_INLINE_BODY_CAP) auto (default — server picks based on byte thresholds) Reach for inline ONLY when body is known-small AND every field is needed; a 200KB JSON inlined is ~12K tokens of context for data you may never use.

Multipart uploads stream files via chunked transfer encoding (no Content-Length). Most servers accept this; some legacy proxies / primitive test servers reject it.

Cookbook: • Explore an unknown endpoint: http_request {method: "GET", url} → schema shows what is there http_read {cache_id, mask: ".data | map({id, name})"} • Top 10 GitHub issues by comment count: http_request {method: "GET", url: "https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/issues"} http_read {cache_id, mask: "sort_by(-.comments)[:10] | .[] | {id, title, comments}"}

Read a cached response body, optionally filtered through a jq mask. Tip: lead with length (e.g. mask: ".data | length") to learn the size before listing items. Required for binary bodies — pass save_to to stream the body to disk; binaries are never inlined into your context.

Re-render the cached response schema in a different format (paths | shape | sample | json_schema) without making a second HTTP call. Try shape for nested structures, sample to see one realistic record, or json_schema for downstream typed pipelines.

Debug helper. No params. Returns the current mcp-peek version, runtime detection (npx | docker | unknown), cwd, files_root (PEEK_FILES_ROOT, or null when unset), and an effective_limits object summarising every configured cap / threshold / timeout (15 fields — see README for the full list). Use when a path is rejected unexpectedly, or to confirm which container/host the server is actually running in.