Agent skill · software engineering · mvanhorn
printing-press-amend
Amend a published CLI from one of two input sources: (1) dogfood mode mines the active Claude Code session transcript for friction (missing flags, hand- rolled API payloads, silent-null returns); (2) direct-input mode accepts user-supplied asks (rename a command, add commands or feeds, fix a named bug, optionally sniff the source site for new endpoints). Confirms scope with the user, plans + executes the fix autonomously, scrubs PII, and opens a PR against mvanhorn/printing-press-library. Two user-in-loop checkpoints: scope after capture, PR draft before open. Trigger phrases: "amend the CLI", "submit a patch", "fix what I just dogfooded", "open a PR for this CLI", "patch this CLI", "add features to my CLI", "rename this command", "add these feeds to <cli>", "sniff for new APIs in <cli>", "amend with these ideas", "use printing-press-amend", "run printing-press-amend".
Why this skill is useful
Adds an executable script that automates the amendment of a CLI based on user input and session data, creating a PR with patches that the AI cannot generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires go installed locally. About 11k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-06. 4,383 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
/printing-press-amend Turn a dogfood session into a PR for a printed CLI in the public library. This skill lives in this repo (the machine) and acts on a printed CLI in the public library. It is sibling to /printing-press-publish (adds a new CLI), /printing-press-polish (improves a CLI pre-publish), and /printing-press-retro (reflects on the machine itself). None of those cover post-publish CLI amendments driven by real-session friction. The artifact this skill produces is semantically a "patch" (in the git/PR sense), tracked by the public library's .printing-press-patches/ directory (one file per patch). Inline // PATCH(...) source comments are optional navigation aids when they make a customized site easier to grep. The slash-skill name is amend to disambiguate from the existing cli-printing-press patch binary subcommand (which AST-injects pre-defined features — different mechanism, different intent). Setup Before doing anything else: <!-- PRESSSETUPCONTRACTSTART --> <!-- PRESSSETUPCONTRACTEND --> After running the setup contract, capture the PRINTINGPRESSBIN=<abs-path> line from stdout. Every subsequent cli-printing-press ... invocation in this skill must use that absolute path (substitute the value, not the literal $PRINTINGPRESSBIN token) — export PATH above only affects the single Bash tool call it runs in, so later calls open a fresh shell where bare cli-printing-press resolves against the user's default PATH and a stale global can shadow the local build. If setup emitted [go-toolchain-old] or [low-disk], surface the advisory to the user and continue unless setup also emitted [setup-error]. [go-toolchain-old] means later Go commands may download the required toolchain or fail when downloads are blocked; [low-disk] means this run may need several GiB for generated files, Go build cache, module downloads, or repository clones. After capturing the binary path, check binary version compatibility. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills mvanhorn/printing-press-amend