curb

curb is a transport utility written in Go, using only the standard library, with zero third-party dependencies.

curb https://api.example.com/users          # streams JSON to stdout
curb https://example.com/release.tar.gz     # saves to disk
curb --vet https://get.example.com/sh | sh  # vets before piping

curb picks the right behavior based on what the server returns and whether the output is going to a human or a pipe. Sensible defaults that match the situation, with flag overrides when you want to be explicit.

Install

or

(Or grab a prebuilt binary for macOS or Linux.)

Three modes

• --inspect stream textual payloads (JSON, HTML, XML, ...) to stdout. The default for anything that looks like text.
• --download save binaries to disk; stream to stdout on a pipe; -o PATH always takes precedence. The default for anything that doesn't look like text.
• --vet buffer the body, run it through security sieves, emit only on pass. Opt-in; intended for the curl | sh use case.

Foundations

• Memory-safe runtime. Go. The memory-unsafe failure modes that bite C-based transports don't apply.
• Standard library only. The attack surface is whatever ships with the Go toolchain, plus the few hundred lines of curb itself.
• HTTPS with no escape hatch. No plaintext fallback, no http://, no carveouts (not even localhost).
• Opt-in friction on top. --vet runs the body through pluggable sieves (heuristic checks, trust-on-first-use pinning) before any bytes reach a shell. A friction layer, not a guarantee.