/printing-press-reprint
Regenerate an existing printed CLI under the current machine. The user gives
a CLI name and (optionally) reasons for the reprint. This skill ensures the
prior CLI is locally present, recommends whether to reuse or redo prior
research, and hands off to
with the context the
novel-features subagent needs to reconcile prior features against the
current machine — keep, reframe, or drop with reasons, never silent.
bash
/printing-press-reprint notion
/printing-press-reprint cal.com the new MCP intent surface landed and the prior CLI ships endpoint-mirror only
/printing-press-reprint allrecipes
When to run
- A significant Printing Press upgrade (new MCP surface, new auth modes, new
transport, scoring rubric changes) would lift this CLI more than manual
polish.
- The published CLI ships with a known systemic gap a reprint would fix.
- The user wants prior novel features re-evaluated against the current
machine and current personas, not carried forward verbatim.
For one-off code-quality fixes, prefer
— it doesn't
redo research or rebuild the manuscript.
Setup
bash
PRESS_HOME="$HOME/printing-press"
PRESS_LIBRARY="$PRESS_HOME/library"
PRESS_MANUSCRIPTS="$PRESS_HOME/manuscripts"
Phase A — Resolve and reconcile presence
Resolve the user's argument the same way
does:
fetch the public library
once, then exact → normalized →
fuzzy match. The argument can be an API slug (
), a brand name
(
), an old
form, or close enough.
Then check what exists locally and reconcile against the public library by
reading both provenance manifests'
and
:
| Local | Public registry | Action |
|---|
| absent | absent | STOP — nothing to reprint; suggest for a fresh print |
| absent | present | invoke /printing-press-import <api>
|
| present | absent | continue — never-published local CLI; skip import |
| present, same | present | continue without import |
| present, public newer | present | offer import via ; user decides |
| present, local newer | present | STOP — local has unpublished work; tell user to publish or discard first |
When invoking
, let it own backup, overwrite,
build-verify, and module-path-rewrite. Wait for it to return clean before
continuing.
Phase B — Verify prior research is reconcilable
Confirm the two paths the novel-features subagent checks for prior research
are populated:
bash
LIB_TARGET="$PRESS_LIBRARY/$API_SLUG"
LIB_RESEARCH="$LIB_TARGET/research.json"
MAN_RESEARCH=$(ls -1t "$PRESS_MANUSCRIPTS/$API_SLUG"/*/research.json 2>/dev/null | head -1)
If neither exists, the published CLI predates
provenance.
The subagent will treat the run as a first print and Pass 2(d) reprint
reconciliation will not fire — there is nothing for it to read. Surface
this and ask:
Published
was built before
provenance landed.
Without it, the novel-features subagent will treat this as a first
print — there is nothing to reconcile against. Continue as a degraded
reprint (essentially a fresh print with a kept binary name)?
If the user declines, exit. If they continue, record the absence so the
hand-off prompt notes that this is a degraded reprint.
Phase C — Recency recommendation
Pull
from the most-recent prior
and
+
from
:
bash
RESEARCHED_AT=$(jq -r '.researched_at // empty' "$MAN_RESEARCH" 2>/dev/null)
PRESS_VERSION=$(jq -r '.printing_press_version // empty' "$LIB_TARGET/.printing-press.json" 2>/dev/null)
GENERATED_AT=$(jq -r '.generated_at // empty' "$LIB_TARGET/.printing-press.json" 2>/dev/null)
Compute the calendar age of the research with
so it stays portable
across macOS/Linux and tolerates the microsecond precision that
carries (BSD
rejects fractional seconds;
is on every supported platform):
bash
AGE_DAYS=$(python3 -c "
from datetime import datetime, timezone
ts = '$RESEARCHED_AT'.replace('Z', '+00:00')
print(int((datetime.now(timezone.utc) - datetime.fromisoformat(ts)).total_seconds() // 86400))
" 2>/dev/null)
Surface both signals to the user — research age and prior machine version.
Age thresholds are rules of thumb, not gates:
- under 30 days → reuse looks safe
- 30–120 days → reuse plausible; the user should mention any known API
churn in their reprint reason so the subagent's Pass 2 picks it up
- over 120 days → redo recommended
Don't predict API churn from age alone — describe the signals and let the
user override. The Phase 0 binary-version-bump revalidation in
handles the machine-delta side independently; don't
duplicate it here.
- Reuse prior research — keep the prior brief; the subagent re-scores
prior novel features against current personas
- Redo research — re-run Phase 1 from scratch; the subagent still
ingests prior novel features as Pass 2(d) input
- Show me first — display the prior brief's headline + novel-features
list, then re-ask between options 1 and 2
Phase D — Hand off to
Invoke
and bundle three things into the prompt:
- A header line stating the user already chose to regenerate, so
Phase 0's library-check should select "Generate a fresh CLI" and not
re-prompt fresh-vs-improve.
- Research mode from Phase C ( or ). Phase 0's existing
reuse logic consumes this.
- The user's freeform reprint reason, verbatim, in a
block. This propagates into the brief as and becomes
Pass 2(e) input to the novel-features subagent — the right hook for
"I want better MCP support" → bias the brainstorm accordingly.
Do
not pass a separate "this is a reprint" marker. The novel-features
subagent runs unconditionally on every print and discovers prior research
via its own discovery snippet (see
skills/printing-press/references/novel-features-subagent.md
). The paths
import populated in Phase A are exactly the paths it checks; Pass 2(d)
fires whenever prior
exists.
After hand-off
The printing-press flow drives the rest. Don't summarize its work — let
the user see the live phases.
If
halts with the subagent's pre-flight HALT (brief
lacks concrete
/
content), the reused prior brief
predates the subagent's required schema. Recommend re-running with
Redo
research selected at Phase C.