CLI Printing Press

Nothing is more valuable than time and money. In a world of AI agents, that's speed and token spend. A well-designed CLI is muscle memory for an agent: no hunting through docs, no wrong turns, no wasted tokens. We built the Printing Press to print the best CLIs in the world for agents.

It reads the official API docs, studies every popular community CLI and MCP server, sniffs the web for the APIs nobody published (think Google Flights or Dominos), and applies the power-user playbook Peter Steinberger proved with discrawl and gogcli - local SQLite, compound commands, agent-native flags. It fuses all of that and prints a token-efficient Go CLI plus a Claude Code skill plus an MCP server for any API or any website.

Three CLIs printed by the press, installable today:

• ESPN (sniffed, no official API). "Tonight's NBA playoff games with live score, series state, each team's leading scorer's stat line, and any injury or lineup news from the last 24 hours." Returns everything in one call.
• flight-goat (Kayak nonstop search plus sniffed Google Flights). "Non-stop flights over 8 hours from Seattle for 4 people, Dec 24 to Jan 1, cheapest first." Two sources stitched into one query.
• linear-pp-cli (50ms against a local SQLite mirror). "Every blocked issue whose blocker has been stuck for a week." Compound queries the API can't answer.

Browse the full catalog of printed CLIs at printingpress.dev or in the Printing Press Library, organized by category, most with full MCP servers.

Codex users: see docs/CODEX.md to install the Printing Press skills with --agent codex, verify the install, and understand how that differs from /printing-press <api> codex.

Cursor users: see docs/CURSOR.md for how to install a printed CLI, attach the matching skill, handle auth, and choose CLI vs MCP when your repo does not already document a workflow.

Install

You need both the binary and the Printing Press skills. The skills (/printing-press <app>) are the primary interface; they drive the binary behind the scenes.

The binary alone works (research, generation, verification, scoring) but skips the curated agent loop. The skills alone have nothing to call. Install both.

Prerequisites: Go 1.26.10 or newer, Claude Code or another skills-supported agent, and Node/npm for npx. The skills are tested with Claude Code; install for Codex with --agent codex when you want to try the same slash-command workflow there. Use Claude Code for the best-tested experience.

1. Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

The installer runs go install for the generator binary, then refreshes all Printing Press skills through skills@latest add --skill '*'. Restart or reload your agent session after it completes so the refreshed skills are loaded.

Use --cli-only or --skills-only when you only want one side:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- --cli-only
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- --skills-only

Claude Code is the default install target. To install or refresh the skills for Codex instead, pass --agent codex:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- --skills-only --agent codex
npx -y skills@latest list -g -a codex --json

See docs/CODEX.md for the Codex-specific notes.

Verify with cli-printing-press --version. If install fails, confirm Go 1.26.10 or newer is installed, Node/npm is installed for npx, and $GOPATH/bin is on your PATH.

Older releases installed a generator binary named printing-press. That legacy entrypoint still works for compatibility, but the canonical generator command is now cli-printing-press so the public library installer can own printing-press list, printing-press search, and printing-press install.

go install github.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/v4/cmd/cli-printing-press@latest

npx -y skills@latest add mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/skills --skill '*' -g -a claude-code -y

npx -y skills@latest add mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/skills --skill '*' -g -a codex -y
npx -y skills@latest list -g -a codex --json

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press/main/scripts/install.sh | bash -s -- --skills-only

Once installed, you can start Claude Code from any folder. Codex users should start a fresh Codex session after installing or refreshing skills.

git clone https://github.com/mvanhorn/cli-printing-press.git
cd cli-printing-press
claude --plugin-dir .          # load this repo's skills directly
claude --plugin-dir . -w       # ...in a new git worktree (parallel runs)

2. Start a printing session

claude

Then inside Claude Code:

/printing-press <app-name>

For example:

/printing-press Notion                       # Print a CLI for an API by name
/printing-press https://postman.com/explore  # ...or point at a website (no spec needed)
/printing-press-reprint notion               # Reprint an existing CLI under the latest machine

/printing-press drives the cli-printing-press binary you installed — research, generation, scoring, and shipcheck all run through it. Two parts, one workflow.

One command. Lean loop. Produces a Go CLI plus an MCP server that absorbs every feature from every competing tool, then transcends with compound use cases only possible with local data. REST, GraphQL, or browser-sniffed traffic. No OpenAPI spec required.

Each run produces two binaries (<api>-pp-cli plus <api>-pp-mcp), research documents, verification proofs, and a Quality Score.

/printing-press HubSpot codex    # Offload code generation to Codex CLI
/printing-press HubSpot          # Standard Opus mode (default)

/printing-press-polish notion

/printing-press-publish linear   # Validates, packages, creates PR

/printing-press-amend                # auto-detect target CLI from session
/printing-press-amend superhuman     # explicit target

Why these CLIs win

Most generators wrap endpoints and stop. Printing Press generates CLIs that understand the domain.

Local-first data layer. High-gravity resources get domain-specific SQLite tables (not JSON blobs), FTS5 full-text search indexes, and incremental sync with cursor tracking. sync pulls data down. search finds it in milliseconds. sql lets power users query directly. All offline, all local.

Machine-owned freshness. Store-backed CLIs can opt into a bounded pre-read refresh via cache.enabled so --data-source auto keeps the local store current without a manual sync.