🌐 HTTP Got a New Verb, and Your POST /search Was Always a Lie

Every POST /search endpoint you have ever written is a read pretending to be a write.

You did not do it because you wanted to. You did it because the alternatives were worse. Your search has a dozen filters, some of them nested, a few of them arrays, and there is no sane way to stuff all of that into a URL. So you reached for POST, put the filter in the body, and moved on. It works.

But you also lied to every proxy, cache, and retry layer between the client and your server. You told them this request might change state. It does not. It is a safe, idempotent read, and you dressed it up as a mutation because the protocol gave you no better option.

As of late 2025, the protocol gives you a better option. It is called QUERY.

A new HTTP method, which almost never happens