@mvanhorn/printing-press-library

Browse, search, install, update, and remove Printing Press-generated CLIs. Each install pulls down a Go binary plus its focused agent skill — the skill lands in every supported agent on your machine (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, and other agents the upstream skills CLI detects).

This package replaces the older @mvanhorn/printing-press npm package. Use the unambiguous printing-press-library command for catalog discovery and installs.

Quick start

Search the catalog, browse a category, then install the CLI you want:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search flights
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list --category travel
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install airbnb

The -y flag only tells npx to run this wrapper package without an interactive npm prompt; list and search do not install catalog CLIs.

Or install the starter pack — four hand-picked CLIs and skills in one command:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install starter-pack

The starter pack installs espn (live sports), flight-goat (flight search), movie-goat (movie discovery), and recipe-goat (recipe ranking).

Discover the catalog

List every published CLI:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list

Filter to one category:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list --category travel

Search by keyword across names, categories, APIs, descriptions, binaries, and generated search metadata:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search flights
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search sports

Discovery commands print compact cards by default:

airbnb (travel) - airbnb-pp-cli
  Search Airbnb and VRBO, find the host's direct booking site, and report the cheapest
  of three sources side-by-side.
  install: npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install airbnb

Use --json when another tool or agent is reading the output:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search flights --json
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list --category travel --json

Catalog JSON includes release metadata when a CLI has a .printing-press-release.json ledger entry. Agents can compare a local binary against the remote catalog without repo inspection:

substack-pp-cli --version
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search substack --json
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library update substack --bin-dir ~/.local/bin

Read release.version, release.cli_name, release.released_at, and release.source_commit from search --json or list --json. Fall back to go version -m or direct repo inspection only when release is missing or the local version string looks suspicious.

Installing CLIs and skills

Every install pulls down the Go binary and the focused skill in one shot. Use --cli-only or --skill-only (see Options) if you want just one half.

One tool:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install airbnb-pp-cli

Several at once (bundles and CLI names mix freely):

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn sentry dub
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install starter-pack cal-com

Under the hood: the installer reads the live catalog at registry.json, resolves the CLI's Go module path, runs go install, and installs the matching focused skill from cli-skills/pp-<name> via npx skills@latest.

Names are forgiving: use the catalog slug (airbnb), generated binary name (airbnb-pp-cli), or API-ish name (Airbnb Vrbo) and the installer normalizes it to the right catalog entry.

Other commands

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search sports
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list --category travel
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list --installed
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library update espn
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library reinstall espn
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library uninstall espn --yes

list shows the public catalog by default. Use list --installed when you only want CLIs already present on your machine.

reinstall is an alias for update: reinstall <name> rebuilds one CLI from the latest catalog code and re-adds its skill, while reinstall with no name refreshes every Printing Press CLI already on your PATH. Reach for it when a binary or skill needs a clean refresh — install <name> overwrites in place too, so either works.

Options

# Install only the Go binary, skip the focused skill
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --cli-only

# Install only the focused skill, skip the Go binary
# (binary will lazy-install on first agent invocation via the skill's instructions)
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --skill-only

# Constrain skill installation to a specific agent (repeatable)
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --agent claude-code

# Override the default binary directory when you need a specific install target
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --bin-dir /path/to/bin

# OpenClaw: target OpenClaw skills; the installer defaults to a per-user binary directory
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --agent openclaw

# Machine-readable output
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --json
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search sports --json
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library list --installed --json

# Pin to an alternate catalog (mainly for testing)
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library search sports --registry-url https://example.com/registry.json

--cli-only and --skill-only are mutually exclusive. They both work with bundles — … install starter-pack --cli-only installs four binaries with no skills, useful for CI machines that don't run Claude Code.

Bundles

| Name | Members | |---|---| | starter-pack | espn, flight-goat, movie-goat, recipe-goat |

More bundles will be added over time. To suggest one, open an issue at the printing-press-library repo.

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• Go 1.26.5 or newer (for go install)
• The installer writes CLI binaries to a per-user binary directory by default: $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows. That directory must be on the runtime PATH for installed CLIs to be runnable by name. If it is missing, install still installs the focused skill, then prints the exact, copy-pasteable line to add for your platform and shell (zsh/bash/fish, PowerShell, cmd, or Git Bash).

Use --bin-dir <dir> only when you want to override the default user bin directory. The installer creates the directory first, sets GOBIN=<dir> for the install, and reports the resulting binary path:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install espn --bin-dir /path/to/bin

Agent and gateway environments often run with a frozen or sanitized PATH. Updating .zshrc, .bashrc, or the Windows user environment may not affect an already-running agent process until you restart that session or gateway. For OpenClaw and similar gateway deployments, install normally and verify the gateway process can resolve the CLI:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install <slug> --agent openclaw

If you installed with an older release that wrote to $GOPATH/bin, reinstall with the current installer. A symlink into $HOME/.local/bin can be a temporary bridge on Unix-like systems, but it should no longer be the default fix.

Migration from @mvanhorn/printing-press

The old package name was ambiguous with the generator repo. If you installed it globally, remove the old package first:

npm uninstall -g @mvanhorn/printing-press

New installs should use:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library <command>

The command name is also printing-press-library, so global installs are explicit:

npm install -g @mvanhorn/printing-press-library
printing-press-library search flights