Part 1 · Lesson 4 · Beginner

Anatomy of HTTP

See the moving parts inside one HTTP exchange.

In this interactive Infrastructure lesson from Stencel Academy you don't just read — you type real commands like curl -v https://api.stencel.ai/models, curl https://api.stencel.ai/nope and watch the machine respond on a live, animated map. It is part of the free How Infrastructure Works course.

Key takeaway: Every HTTP exchange is request line + headers + body out, status code + headers + body back.

Before this lesson

Builds on: Ports: Many Doors, One Machine.

What you'll practise

curl -I https://api.stencel.ai/models — HEAD: headers only — check without downloading the body.
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" https://api.stencel.ai/models — Just the status code — perfect for scripts and health checks.
curl -X DELETE https://api.stencel.ai/models — Methods are verbs — GET reads, POST creates, DELETE removes. Servers can refuse.

Terms you'll learn

HTTPrequest lineheaderstatus coderesponse body404 Not Found

Check your understanding

Which part of the response says how the request went?

The status code
The request line
The Host header

Open the interactive lesson →