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I took idempotent and safe to be functionally equivalent. i.e. that which causes no state-change on the server. Thanks for the correction. Effectively a "debounced" operation.

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Idempotent just means that you can do it as many times as you want (n) and the state will remain the same, for n >= 1.

The origin of my confusion is the definition of GET as idempotent. My understanding of this verb is it (should) cause no mutations. So the correct classification of GET is "safe".

Safe is a subset of idempotent.

Idempotent means that one invocation has the same effect as more than one invocation.

Safe means that zero invocations has the same effect as one or more invocations.

Yeah I understand how the categories work but the language was heretofire confusing

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