Operating rules

• Use scripts/rest_request.py for all HMDB calls.
• Use base_url=https://hmdb.ca.
• Search endpoints are better with per_page=10 and max_items=10.
• Keep category-specific requests narrow instead of broad searches across multiple categories at once.
• Re-run requests in long conversations instead of relying on older tool output.
• Treat displayed ... in tool previews as UI truncation, not literal request content.

Execution behavior

• Return concise markdown summaries from the script JSON by default.
• Prefer unearth/q with explicit query, category, and format=json.
• If the user needs the full payload, set save_raw=true and report the saved file path.

Input

• Read one JSON object from stdin.
• Required fields: base_url, path
• Optional fields: method, params, headers, json_body, form_body, record_path, response_format, max_items, max_depth, timeout_sec, save_raw, raw_output_path
• Common HMDB patterns:
  • {"base_url":"https://hmdb.ca","path":"unearth/q","params":{"query":"serotonin","category":"metabolites","format":"json","per_page":10},"record_path":"metabolites","max_items":10}
  • {"base_url":"https://hmdb.ca","path":"unearth/q","params":{"query":"glycolysis","category":"pathways","format":"json","per_page":10},"max_items":10}

Output

• Success returns ok, source, path, method, status_code, warnings, and either compact records or a compact summary.
• Use raw_output_path when save_raw=true.
• Failure returns ok=false with error.code and error.message.

Execution

echo '{"base_url":"https://hmdb.ca","path":"unearth/q","params":{"query":"serotonin","category":"metabolites","format":"json","per_page":10},"record_path":"metabolites","max_items":10}' | python scripts/rest_request.py

References

• No additional runtime references are required; keep the import package limited to this file and scripts/rest_request.py.