Hello @deanishe!
Thank you for taking time to look at the code and give some advices, i wrote this workflow some time ago, i don't remember exactly why i choose somethings, but regarding your observations, i guess it doesn't need request, i probably forgot Alfred-Workflow had a web module, and implemented the feature with requests, i'll refactor and remove this in next version, if i find something missing which i doubt because is a simple GET for a file, but anyway, i 'll point to you.
About passing the wf reference around, i didn't remember this behavior, i probably didn't read the documentation well enough (shame on me haha), or i just don't remember right now or why the hell i did that, anyway, i'll refactor the code and read the documentation again so i don't miss any point.