Weather Goat — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the weather-goat-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:

   npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install weather-goat --cli-only
   

2. Verify: weather-goat-pp-cli --version
3. Ensure $GOPATH/bin (or $HOME/go/bin) is on $PATH.

If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.23+):

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/other/weather-goat/cmd/weather-goat-pp-cli@latest

If --version reports "command not found" after install, the install step did not put the binary on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds.

When to Use This CLI

Reach for this when a user wants a weather lookup, storm or alert check, air-quality read, activity recommendation (bike, hike, walk, commute, drive) based on current conditions, or a "is today normal for this time of year" comparison. Particularly valuable as a morning-briefing source with weather-goat-pp-cli (no args → current + today's forecast + active alerts for your configured home location).

Don't reach for this when the user needs hyperlocal or commercial-grade meteorology (use a paid provider like Tomorrow.io or ECMWF), or for international severe-weather alerts (NWS is US-only).

Unique Capabilities

Activity verdicts — the differentiator

• go walk|bike|hike|commute|drive [location] — GO / CAUTION / STOP verdict for a specific activity, with reasoning.

  Turns "look at the weather" into "what should I do." Each activity has its own thresholds.

  • walk — preparation advice (umbrella? jacket? sunscreen? layers?)
  • bike — wind, rain, AQI, ice thresholds tuned for cycling
  • hike — lightning, hypothermia risk, altitude UV
  • commute — compares AM departure vs PM return weather (time-aware)
  • drive — visibility, ice, wind gusts, NWS warnings

Severe weather intelligence

• alerts [location] — Active NWS warnings: tornado, storm, flood, heat. Structured output with severity and area polygons.

• watch [location] — Poll NWS every 60 seconds during active severe weather. Prints new/updated alerts as they arrive. For running during a storm.

Context and comparison

• normal [location] — Is today normal for this time of year? Compares today's high/low/precip against historical average for the same date.

• compare <location1> <location2> [...] — Side-by-side forecast for 2+ locations. Useful for travel planning or "which city is the weather better this weekend."

• morning-brief (or just weather-goat-pp-cli with no args, if config set-location was run) — Current conditions + today's forecast + active NWS alerts in one call. The daily-kickoff command.

Air, UV, and pollen

• breathe [location] — AQI + pollen + UV with an exercise recommendation.

• air-quality [location] — Detailed AQI with PM2.5, ozone, etc.

• weather_codes — Reference for Open-Meteo weather code mappings (internal but useful when working with --json output).

Command Reference

Core:

• weather-goat-pp-cli — Morning brief (requires config set-location first, or pass [location])
• weather-goat-pp-cli forecast [location] — Multi-day forecast
• weather-goat-pp-cli alerts [location] — Active NWS severe weather
• weather-goat-pp-cli history [location] — Historical weather

Activity:

• weather-goat-pp-cli go <activity> [location] — walk, bike, hike, commute, drive

Air / environment:

• weather-goat-pp-cli breathe [location] — AQI + pollen + UV brief
• weather-goat-pp-cli air-quality [location] — Detailed AQI

Context:

• weather-goat-pp-cli normal [location] — Today vs historical average
• weather-goat-pp-cli compare <loc1> <loc2> — Side-by-side
• weather-goat-pp-cli watch [location] — Live NWS monitoring loop

Config + utility:

• weather-goat-pp-cli config set-location <place> — Set home location
• weather-goat-pp-cli geocoding <name> — Resolve place names to coordinates
• weather-goat-pp-cli doctor — Verify connectivity

Recipes

"Should I bike to work today?"

weather-goat-pp-cli go bike --agent

Returns a structured GO/CAUTION/STOP verdict with reasoning — wind speed, precipitation, AQI, temperature, ice risk — weighted for cycling specifically.

Morning briefing after setting home location

weather-goat-pp-cli config set-location "Seattle, WA"
weather-goat-pp-cli --agent  # morning brief — no args

Once location is saved, the no-arg invocation returns current conditions + today's forecast + active NWS alerts. Run from a shell startup script or cron at 7am.

Travel decision — which city is better this weekend?

weather-goat-pp-cli compare "Portland, OR" "San Francisco, CA" --days 3 --agent

Side-by-side 3-day forecast for both. One glance picks the trip destination.

Watch for severe weather during a warning

weather-goat-pp-cli watch --agent &  # background poll every 60s

Runs indefinitely; prints JSON events to stdout when alerts change. Pipe into a logging tool or Slack webhook for alerting.

Is today unusually hot?

weather-goat-pp-cli normal --agent

Returns today's high/low/precip alongside the 30-year historical average for the same calendar date. Easy "is this a heat wave" check.

Auth Setup

None required. Open-Meteo is free and unlimited; NWS is free and US-public-data. The auth command exists for consistency but is a no-op.

Optional config:

• WEATHER_GOAT_CONFIG — override config file path
• Home location persisted to ~/.config/weather-goat-pp-cli/config.toml via config set-location

Agent Mode

Add --agent to any command. Expands to --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes. Use --days N for forecast range on relevant commands, --no-cache to bypass the 15-minute GET cache.

Filtering output

--select accepts dotted paths to descend into nested responses; arrays traverse element-wise:

weather-goat-pp-cli <command> --agent --select id,name
weather-goat-pp-cli <command> --agent --select items.id,items.owner.name

Use this to narrow huge payloads to the fields you actually need — critical for deeply nested API responses.

Exit Codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
2	Usage error
3	Location not found (geocoding failed)
5	API error (Open-Meteo or NWS issue)
7	Rate limited (very rare; Open-Meteo is unlimited)

Installation

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/other/weather-goat/cmd/weather-goat-pp-cli@latest
weather-goat-pp-cli config set-location "Your City, ST"
weather-goat-pp-cli doctor

MCP Server

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/other/weather-goat/cmd/weather-goat-pp-mcp@latest
claude mcp add weather-goat-pp-mcp -- weather-goat-pp-mcp

Argument Parsing

Given $ARGUMENTS:

1. Empty, help, or --help → run weather-goat-pp-cli --help
2. install → CLI; install mcp → MCP
3. Activity queries ("should I bike/walk/hike...") → go <activity> [location] --agent
4. Severe weather ("any tornado warnings", "storms coming") → alerts [location] --agent
5. Comparison ("better weather in X or Y") → compare <loc1> <loc2> --agent
6. Anything else → forecast [location] (or morning brief if no location passed and home is configured)

Agent Workflow Features

This CLI exposes three shared agent-workflow capabilities patched in from cli-printing-press PR #218.

Named profiles

Persist a set of flags under a name and reuse them across invocations.

# Save the current non-default flags as a named profile
weather-goat-pp-cli profile save <name>

# Use a profile — overlays its values onto any flag you don't set explicitly
weather-goat-pp-cli --profile <name> <command>

# List / inspect / remove
weather-goat-pp-cli profile list
weather-goat-pp-cli profile show <name>
weather-goat-pp-cli profile delete <name> --yes

Flag precedence: explicit flag > env var > profile > default.

--deliver

Route command output to a sink other than stdout. Useful when an agent needs to hand a result to a file, a webhook, or another process without plumbing.

weather-goat-pp-cli <command> --deliver file:/path/to/out.json
weather-goat-pp-cli <command> --deliver webhook:https://hooks.example/in

File sinks write atomically (tmp + rename). Webhook sinks POST application/json (or application/x-ndjson when --compact is set). Unknown schemes produce a structured refusal listing the supported set.

feedback

Record in-band feedback about this CLI from the agent side of the loop. Local-only by default; safe to call without configuration.

weather-goat-pp-cli feedback "what surprised you or tripped you up"
weather-goat-pp-cli feedback list         # show local entries
weather-goat-pp-cli feedback clear --yes  # wipe

Entries append to ~/.weather-goat-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl as JSON lines. When WEATHER_GOAT_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set and either --send is passed or WEATHER_GOAT_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND=true, the entry is also POSTed upstream (non-blocking — local write always succeeds).