Agent skill · software engineering · jeremylongshore
api-testing
Use when testing HTTP endpoints, probing URLs for status and headers, or running declarative API test suites from plain text files
Why this skill is useful
Adds specific commands and patterns for API testing with Hurl and httpx that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires httpx, hurl installed locally. About 2k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 2,604 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
API Testing When to Use Testing REST API endpoints for correct responses Writing declarative, repeatable HTTP test suites Chaining HTTP requests (authenticate → create → verify) Probing multiple URLs for availability, status codes, or headers Validating response bodies, headers, and status codes with assertions Tools Tool Purpose Structured output ------ --------- ------------------- Hurl Declarative HTTP testing from plain text .hurl files --json for JSON report httpx Fast HTTP probing toolkit (ProjectDiscovery) -json for JSON output Patterns Hurl: Simple GET with status assertion Create a .hurl file: Run it: Hurl: POST with JSON body and response validation Hurl: Chained requests (auth → create → verify) Hurl: Run test suite with JSON report Hurl: Use variables from command line httpx: Probe a list of URLs for status codes httpx: Probe with full JSON output (status, title, tech) httpx: Check specific ports across hosts httpx: Follow redirects and show final URL Pipelines Hurl test suite → summarize failures Each stage: Hurl runs all tests and writes JSON reports, jq filters to failures and extracts error details. Discover endpoints with Katana → probe with httpx Each stage: Katana crawls and discovers URLs, httpx probes each for status and metadata. Prefer Over Prefer Hurl over curl scripts for multi-step API testing — declarative syntax with built-in assertions, no bash scripting needed Prefer Hurl over Postman/Bruno for CI-friendly test suites — plain text files, no GUI dependency Prefer httpx over curl loops for probing many URLs — concurrent, structured output, built for scale Do NOT Use When Need full browser rendering or JavaScript execution — use web-crawling skill (Playwright) Building a long-running API client or SDK — write code instead Testing WebSocket or gRPC endpoints — use specialized tools (wscat, grpcurl) Single ad-hoc curl request — just use curl directly
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills jeremylongshore/api-testing