Nginx proxies HTTP QUERY method but won't cache it, tests reveal

The IETF's RFC 10008, published in June, introduces a new HTTP method called QUERY — essentially a GET request permitted to carry a body, designed to be safe, idempotent, and cacheable. A developer tested real-world readiness by building a strict search API in Frankfurt that only accepts QUERY requests, then asked eight AI language models to write working clients. When explicitly told to use the QUERY method, all eight models succeeded without falling back to POST, largely aided by Python's flexible standard library. However, when given only a vague prompt with no method specified, all eight defaulted to POST — reflecting 15 years of convention around JSON search endpoints. The bigger surprise was infrastructure: nginx will proxy QUERY requests but will not cache them, meaning the method's key caching advantage remains unrealised in common server setups.