pp-postman-explore

Original：🇺🇸 English
Translated

The CLI for the public API directory at postman.com/explore — search, rank, and watch community-contributed Postman Collections, agent-native and offline. Trigger phrases: `find a postman collection for`, `what postman collection should i fork for`, `is there a postman collection for`, `browse postman api network`, `compare postman publishers`, `what changed on the postman network`, `use postman-explore`, `run postman-explore`.

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Sourcemvanhorn/printing-press-library
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NPX Install

npx skill4agent add mvanhorn/printing-press-library pp-postman-explore

Tags

Translated version includes tags in frontmatter
postman-cliapi-discoverypostman-collectionsdeveloper-toolsagent-integration

SKILL.md Content

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Postman Explore — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the 
postman-explore-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:
    bash
    npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install postman-explore --cli-only
  2. Verify: 
    postman-explore-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+):
bash
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/postman-explore/cmd/postman-explore-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

Pick this CLI when you need to programmatically discover, compare, or watch community-contributed Postman Collections / workspaces / APIs / flows. Ideal for AI agents asked to find a canonical Postman Collection for a vendor, for API curators comparing publishers in a category, and for monitoring scripts that watch network changes. Skip this CLI for managing your own private Postman workspace — that's the authenticated Postman product API, which is a different surface entirely.

Unique Capabilities

These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.

Discovery that compounds locally

  • canonical
     — One command finds the best community Postman Collection for a vendor, ranked by publisher verification, fork count, and recency.
    When the user asks an agent for a vendor's Postman Collection, this returns the best canonical choice in one call instead of forcing the agent to dedupe a search result list.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli canonical stripe --json
  • top
     — Rank entities by any metric (weekForks, monthViewCount, etc.) with category and entity-type narrowing.
    When agents need to recommend the most-forked collections THIS week, not the all-time leaders, this is the only path that works.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli top --metric weekForkCount --type collection --category payments --limit 10
  • similar
     — Given an entity numeric id, return collections with overlapping name, summary, and category — ranked by FTS relevance score against the seed entity's text.
    When an integrator finds one collection but wants to compare against alternatives, this returns the rivals in one call rather than forcing a fresh search.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli similar 10289 --limit 5 --json

Comparative analysis

  • publishers top
     — Aggregate fork counts across every entity per publisher within a category; rank teams by total community gravity.
    API curators picking between vendors need cross-publisher comparison. Agents recommending an integration partner need this to break ties.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli publishers top --category developer-productivity --limit 5 --json
  • category landscape
     — For a category slug, return: total entity counts per type, top 5 publishers by aggregate fork count, and top 5 entities by viewCount. One command, one structured payload.
    API curators evaluating a vertical (payments, AI, devops) want one snapshot of who dominates and what's popular; this is exactly that snapshot.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli category landscape payments --json

Time-windowed signals

  • drift
     — Compare two synced snapshots and report new entities, removed entities, and entities whose updatedAt advanced.
    Agents tracking when a vendor publishes a new collection or updates an existing one rely on this; there is no other way to know.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli drift --since 7d --type collection --json
  • velocity
     — Rank collections by acceleration ratio: (weekForkCount × 4) / monthForkCount. Surfaces collections breaking out before they top the popular list.
    Catching a breakout collection before it tops the popular sort is high-value for API curators tracking emerging vendors.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli velocity --type collection --top 10

Quality signals

  • browse
     — When passed --verified-only, the browse command filters to entities owned by publishers with the verified-team flag set.
    When you want only the official-vendor collections (not community forks), this is the cleanest filter.
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli browse collection --verified-only --category payments --json --limit 5

HTTP Transport

This CLI uses Chrome-compatible HTTP transport for browser-facing endpoints. It does not require a resident browser process for normal API calls.

Discovery Signals

This CLI was generated with browser-observed traffic context.
  • Capture coverage: 17 API entries from 24 total network entries
  • Protocols: rest_json (60% confidence), rpc_envelope (95% confidence)
  • Auth signals: none
  • Generation hints: client_pattern:proxy-envelope, uses_browser_http_transport, no_auth_required, skip_clearance_cookie
  • Emitted command surface: browse; networkentity get-network-entity; networkentity get-network-entity-counts; category list-categories; category get; team get-workspaces; team get; search-all

Command Reference

category — Manage category
  • postman-explore-pp-cli category get
    — Returns full details for a category by its URL slug (e.g., 
    artificial-intelligence
    , 
    developer-productivity
    ,...
  • postman-explore-pp-cli category list-categories
    — Returns all categories used to organize the API network (e.g., AI, E-commerce, Communication, DevOps). Categories...
networkentity — Manage networkentity
  • postman-explore-pp-cli networkentity get-network-entity
    — Returns full entity record by internal numeric id (the 
    id
    field from 
    listNetworkEntities
    , NOT the 
    entityId
    UUID).
  • postman-explore-pp-cli networkentity get-network-entity-counts
    — Returns aggregate counts across the entire public API network: collections, workspaces, APIs, flows, notebooks,...
  • postman-explore-pp-cli networkentity list-network-entities
    — List public collections, workspaces, APIs, or flows. Supports category filtering, pagination, and minimum-fork...
search-all — Manage search all
  • postman-explore-pp-cli search-all
    — Search collections, workspaces, requests, flows, and teams by free-text query. With no 
    queryIndices
    set, the...
team — Publisher teams on the API network
  • postman-explore-pp-cli team get
    — Returns small profile object (id, name, description, publicHandle, profileURL, createdAt, updatedAt) for a team by...
  • postman-explore-pp-cli team get-workspaces
    — Returns the array of public workspaces owned by a team identified by its 
    publicHandle
    (e.g., 
    stripedev
    ,...

Finding the right command

When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:
bash
postman-explore-pp-cli which "<capability in your own words>"
which
resolves a natural-language capability query to the best matching command from this CLI's curated feature index. Exit code 
0
means at least one match; exit code 
2
means no confident match — fall back to 
--help
or use a narrower query.

Recipes

Find Stripe's official collection

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli canonical stripe --json --select id,name,publisher.publicHandle,metrics.forkCount
The canonical command picks the verified-publisher, highest-fork-count match and narrows the JSON to the four fields agents actually need.

Compare top payments publishers

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli publishers top --category payments --limit 5 --json
Aggregate fork counts across each publisher's full portfolio in the payments category.

What changed on the network this week

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli sync && postman-explore-pp-cli drift --since 7d --type collection --json
Sync, then diff against the previous snapshot to find newly added or recently updated collections.

Browse top developer-productivity collections, narrow to verified publishers

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli browse collection --category 4 --verified-only --limit 10 --json --select name,publisher.publicHandle,metrics.viewCount,redirectURL
Use --select with dotted paths to avoid pulling the full ~5 KB metric array per record — keeps output small for agent context.

Find accelerating collections in payments

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli velocity --type collection --category payments --top 10
Velocity ranks by week-vs-month fork rate, surfacing collections that are breaking out before they top the all-time popular list.

Find collections similar to a seed

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli similar 10289 --limit 5 --json
More-like-this query against the local FTS index — useful for discovering rival or complementary community collections.

Get a category-wide snapshot

bash
postman-explore-pp-cli category landscape payments --json
Combines per-type counts, top publishers, and top entities for a category in one structured payload.

Auth Setup

No authentication required.
Run 
postman-explore-pp-cli doctor
to verify setup.

Agent Mode

Add 
--agent
to any command. Expands to: 
--json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes
.
  • Pipeable — JSON on stdout, errors on stderr
  • Filterable — 
    --select
    keeps a subset of fields. Dotted paths descend into nested structures; arrays traverse element-wise. Critical for keeping context small on verbose APIs:
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli category get mock-value --agent --select id,name,status
  • Previewable — 
    --dry-run
    shows the request without sending
  • Offline-friendly — sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
  • Non-interactive — never prompts, every input is a flag

Response envelope

Commands that read from the local store or the API wrap output in a provenance envelope:
json
{
  "meta": {"source": "live" | "local", "synced_at": "...", "reason": "..."},
  "results": <data>
}
Parse 
.results
for data and 
.meta.source
to know whether it's live or local. A human-readable 
N results (live)
summary is printed to stderr only when stdout is a terminal — piped/agent consumers get pure JSON on stdout.

Agent Feedback

When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:
postman-explore-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
postman-explore-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
postman-explore-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10
Entries are stored locally at 
~/.postman-explore-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl
. They are never POSTed unless 
POSTMAN_EXPLORE_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT
is set AND either 
--send
is passed or 
POSTMAN_EXPLORE_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND=true
. Default behavior is local-only.
Write what surprised you, not a bug report. Short, specific, one line: that is the part that compounds.

Output Delivery

Every command accepts 
--deliver <sink>
. The output goes to the named sink in addition to (or instead of) stdout, so agents can route command results without hand-piping. Three sinks are supported:
SinkEffect
stdout
Default; write to stdout only
file:<path>
Atomically write output to 
<path>
(tmp + rename)
webhook:<url>
POST the output body to the URL (
application/json
or 
application/x-ndjson
when 
--compact
)
Unknown schemes are refused with a structured error naming the supported set. Webhook failures return non-zero and log the URL + HTTP status on stderr.

Named Profiles

A profile is a saved set of flag values, reused across invocations. Use it when a scheduled agent calls the same command every run with the same configuration - HeyGen's "Beacon" pattern.
postman-explore-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
postman-explore-pp-cli --profile briefing category get mock-value
postman-explore-pp-cli profile list --json
postman-explore-pp-cli profile show briefing
postman-explore-pp-cli profile delete briefing --yes
Explicit flags always win over profile values; profile values win over defaults. 
agent-context
lists all available profiles under 
available_profiles
so introspecting agents discover them at runtime.

Exit Codes

CodeMeaning
0Success
2Usage error (wrong arguments)
3Resource not found
5API error (upstream issue)
7Rate limited (wait and retry)
10Config error

Argument Parsing

Parse 
$ARGUMENTS
:
  1. Empty, 
    help
    , or 
    --help
     → show 
    postman-explore-pp-cli --help
    output
  2. Starts with 
    install
     → ends with 
    mcp
    → MCP installation; otherwise → see Prerequisites above
  3. Anything else → Direct Use (execute as CLI command with 
    --agent
    )

MCP Server Installation

  1. Install the MCP server:
    bash
    go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/postman-explore/cmd/postman-explore-pp-mcp@latest
  2. Register with Claude Code:
    bash
    claude mcp add postman-explore-pp-mcp -- postman-explore-pp-mcp
  3. Verify: 
    claude mcp list

Direct Use

  1. Check if installed: 
    which postman-explore-pp-cli
    If not found, offer to install (see Prerequisites at the top of this skill).
  2. Match the user query to the best command from the Unique Capabilities and Command Reference above.
  3. Execute with the 
    --agent
    flag:
    bash
    postman-explore-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent
  4. If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help: 
    postman-explore-pp-cli <command> --help
    .