with all due respect this sounds like a confusing cli argument design. I am the one doing it wrong :’) I personally can never remember all the #curl arguments, only the most commonly used ones, and -X is one that is easy to remember and can be used for many occasions. Maybe the solution should be to prefer -X always and a separate argument for whether the redirects should follow explicitly given method

what would i use if the request doesn’t have a body?

Old habits die hard