This could also be as simple as ensuring the resulting body is wrapped in quotes:

JSON.parse('Target is closing') => SyntaxError

JSON.parse('"Target is closing"') => "Target is closing"

Ensuring the wrapping quotes are part of the body would be valid JSON

This seems to be intentional (?): https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/content/browser/devtools/devtools_http_handler.cc?rcl=8b7d48f1c59bcc8258556e6e71cb6f4084ddbac2&l=586

Existing clients already rely upon this behavior.

@pfeldman  this doesn't seem like a great reason. At the very least can the response type be changed to `text/plain` ?

@brian: what is your use case? Did you consider using Target domain?

There are many http libraries that will deserialize data based upon the content type. In these cases you have to capture the error state and handle it, which depending upon the language is not very performant.

@pfeldman ping on my last comment

@brian: still waiting for your comment on #7.

@pfeldman did you see the use case in #8 or are you referring to the Target domain?

I don't think I did see the use case. Probably some libraries deserialize data, but others don't. "which depending upon the language is not very performant" does not sound real provided we are talking about anr http request here.