Shell

Enter an interactive terminal session with HTTPeep capture enabled using httpeep-cli shell or hp shell.

hp shell opens an interactive terminal session with proxy environment variables already configured for HTTPeep. It is the fastest way to capture traffic from command-line tools, package managers, SDKs, and test commands that honor HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY.

hp is the short alias for httpeep-cli; both command names work the same way.

What it does

When you run hp shell, the CLI:

Starts the HTTPeep proxy if it is not already running.
Reuses the running proxy when a live proxy instance is already available.
Generates capture setup files under ~/.httpeep/automatic-setup/.
Loads proxy environment variables such as HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, ALL_PROXY, http_proxy, and https_proxy.
Enables runtime hooks for Node.js, Python, Ruby, and Java/JVM tooling.
Enters a child shell in the current terminal.

When you exit that child shell, you return to your original terminal session.

A normal CLI process cannot mutate the parent shell environment directly. hp shell intentionally enters a child shell so capture stays scoped to that terminal session.

How it chooses the proxy endpoint

hp shell uses the configured proxy host and port from the running HTTPeep runtime. If the proxy is configured to bind to an unspecified address such as 0.0.0.0, ::, or [::], the shell uses 127.0.0.1 for client-side proxy environment variables.

This keeps local command-line tools connecting to the loopback interface while the proxy can still listen on a wider bind address.

Verify the capture environment

Inside the shell, run:

echo "$HTTPEEP_INTERCEPT_ACTIVE"
echo "$HTTP_PROXY"
curl -v https://httpbin.org/get

Then open HTTPeep and confirm the request appears in the session list.

Inspect captured traffic

Open another terminal or run after leaving the shell:

hp sessions list --keyword api.example.com
hp --format json sessions list --fields id,method,url,status_code,timing

Disable capture inside the shell

If you want to keep the shell open but remove the HTTPeep environment, run:

httpeep_intercept_off

You can also leave the capture shell entirely:

exit

Generated setup files

The command writes reusable setup artifacts to:

~/.httpeep/automatic-setup/

Important files include:

File	Purpose
`httpeep_env_automatic_setup.sh`	POSIX shell environment setup
`httpeep_env_automatic_setup_run.sh`	POSIX run script used by `hp shell`
`httpeep_env_automatic_setup.ps1`	PowerShell environment setup
`node/httpeep-node-bootstrap.js`	Node.js runtime hook
`python/sitecustomize.py`	Python runtime hook
`ruby/httpeep_proxy.rb`	Ruby runtime hook

When to use it

Use hp shell when you want to capture a sequence of terminal commands without editing each command individually:

hp shell
npm install
python scripts/smoke_test.py
curl -v https://api.example.com/health
exit

For non-interactive automation, prefer explicit environment variables or command-specific proxy flags so scripts do not block inside an interactive shell.

For launching desktop applications or browsers with capture enabled, use hp launch instead.

hp shell is also used by hp record start --shell workflows so recorded terminal traffic goes through the same proxy setup path. If you only need to send one request through HTTPeep, hp request --url ... is usually simpler.