Comment by floren

You're right, I mischaracterized Spartan. Although it is very similar to Gemini, it's not compatible because the author decided even 2-digit response codes were foolish luxury, and as you mentioned there's the TLS thing. Of course, we still call it HTTP even when it transits a TLS connection, but that's not The Gemini Way so...

True minimalists will, of course, use the Mercury protocol: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/floren/mercury/master/SPEC