Agent skill · software engineering · mvanhorn
pp-xai
Printing Press CLI for xAI. REST API for xAI compatible with other providers.
Why this skill is useful
Adds executable commands for managing xAI models and API interactions that aren't available in public documentation.
What it needs
Requires xai-pp-cli installed locally. About 8k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-06. 1,890 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
xAI — Printing Press CLI Prerequisites: Install the CLI This skill drives the xai-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first: 1. Install via the Printing Press installer. It defaults binaries to $HOME/.local/bin on macOS/Linux and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin on Windows: 2. Verify: xai-pp-cli --version 3. Ensure the reported install directory is on $PATH for the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill. If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.6 or newer). This installs into $GOPATH/bin (default $HOME/go/bin), so add that directory to $PATH instead: If --version reports "command not found" after install, the runtime cannot see the binary directory on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds. Use xAI's REST API from scripts and agents with JSON-first output, local cache support, and MCP tooling. The CLI keeps the official bearer-token contract and exposes read-only inspection commands for model and credential health checks. Unique Capabilities These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API. Model planning model-picker — Rank live xAI models for a task using the authenticated model catalog. Use this before generation, vision, embedding, image, or video workflows when an agent needs a valid model ID. model-capabilities — Build a live capability matrix for the authenticated xAI model catalog. Use this when an agent needs to choose between chat, reasoning, vision, embedding, image, and video surfaces. Cost and readiness cost-preview — Estimate xAI token cost from live model pricing metadata before sending a request. Use this before a large request to estimate prompt and completion cost from xAI's current model metadata. smoke-chat — Verify that the authenticated key can run a tiny xAI chat completion. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills mvanhorn/xai