datalad-annex supports cloning from the web special remote, using an url that contains the result of pushing to eg, a directory special remote. `datalad-annex::https://example.com?type=web&url={noquery}` Supporting something like this in git-remote-annex would be good. While to the user this might be considered part of the web special remote, it would really be a separate download code path in git-remote-annex that downloads from the urls. datalad-annex assumes that the url uses the exporttree=yes layout. If git-annex did the same, it would look in "$url/.git/annex/objects/". But it could instead try both that and the regular hash directories and use whichever it found. How should the annex:: url look for this? It needs to contain the UUID of the special remote (not the web special remote) because the MANIFEST key includes the UUID. Perhaps "annex::https://example.com/?type=web&uuid=..." or "annex::uuid?type=web&url=..." (in either case the inner url will need to be URI-encoded) What should be recorded in .git/config for such a remote? I suppose the annex:: url and no annex-uuid. --[[Joey]]