Operating rules

Use scripts/rest_request.py for all eQTL Catalogue calls.
Use base_url=https://www.ebi.ac.uk/eqtl/api.
Prefer targeted association endpoints over broad list endpoints.
The public API currently appears strict about query validation, and live smoke tests returned intermittent 400/500/timeout failures even with documented parameter sets; treat this source as usable but upstream-fragile.
For association endpoints, the script now backfills compatibility defaults for quant_method, p_lower, p_upper, and blank filter strings because the live API is currently rejecting omitted optional filters.
Prefer variant_id in requests; the script mirrors it to the legacy snp query key to accommodate the current server-side validator.
Re-run requests in long conversations instead of relying on older tool output.

Execution behavior

Return concise markdown summaries from the script JSON by default.
Return raw JSON only if the user explicitly asks for machine-readable output.
Prefer documented versioned paths such as v3/studies, v3/associations, v3/studies/<study_id>/associations, or legacy v1/.../associations routes with explicit filters, and surface upstream 400/500 errors verbatim when they occur.