ipfs-client_skill

Overview

This skill provides read-only IPFS queries to fetch files, inspect metadata, explore DAGs, and resolve IPNS names using a local node or public HTTP gateways. It intentionally avoids any operations that modify the IPFS network—no pinning, publishing, or config changes. Use it to safely examine content, headers, and DAG structure across gateways or via the ipfs CLI.

How this skill works

The skill prefers the ipfs CLI when available for direct, faster queries (cat, ls, dag, name resolve). When the CLI is not present it falls back to HTTP gateway requests (curl) against configured public or local gateways. All operations are read-only: fetching content, reading headers, listing links, resolving IPNS and inspecting DAG metadata without altering network state.

When to use it

• Quickly fetch a file or directory from IPFS without running a full node.
• Inspect content-type, size, and headers for an IPFS CID via gateway HEAD requests.
• Explore DAG structure and follow links for debugging or data discovery.
• Resolve an IPNS name to its current IPFS target using CLI or gateway.
• Verify a CID matches expected content with block/object stat commands.

Best practices

• Prefer a local ipfs daemon for frequent or production queries to avoid gateway limits.
• Set IPFS_GATEWAY to a reliable gateway (local or dedicated) and fallback to public gateways.
• Try multiple public gateways if content is missing—distribution varies among peers.
• Use header-only requests (curl -I) to inspect content-type and content-length before downloading.
• Treat IPNS as mutable: verify resolved CID before relying on content.

Example use cases

• Fetch an example tutorial file via https://ipfs.io/ipfs/<CID> for offline review.
• List directory contents of a CID using ipfs ls or a gateway HTML listing.
• Resolve an ENS-linked IPNS pointer to find the current site version.
• Dump DAG JSON with ipfs dag get to inspect nested metadata or links.
• Check MIME type and size with curl -I before piping data into processing tools.