name

pp-postman-explore

description

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`.

author

Trevin Chow

license

Apache-2.0

argument-hint

<command> [args] | install cli|mcp

allowed-tools

Read Bash

metadata

openclaw

requires

install

bins

postman-explore-pp-cli

kind

bins

module

postman-explore-pp-cli

github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/postman-explore/cmd/postman-explore-pp-cli

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:

Install via the Printing Press installer:

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install postman-explore --cli-only

Verify: postman-explore-pp-cli --version
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 1.26.3 or newer):

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.
```
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.
```
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.
```
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.
```
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.
```
postman-explore-pp-cli category landscape payments --json
```

Time-windowed signals

drift — Report locally synced entities whose API-side updatedAt timestamp falls inside a time window.

Agents tracking recently updated vendor collections rely on this after a periodic sync; it is an updated-within-window view, not a two-snapshot removed-entity diff.
```
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.
```
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.
```
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:

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

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

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

postman-explore-pp-cli sync --resources collection,workspace,api,flow,category && postman-explore-pp-cli drift --since 7d --type collection --json

Sync, then query the local store for collections whose API-side updatedAt falls inside the requested window.

Browse top developer-productivity collections, narrow to verified publishers

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

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

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

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:
```
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:

{
  "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:

Sink	Effect
`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

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

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

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

MCP Server Installation

Install the MCP server:

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/postman-explore/cmd/postman-explore-pp-mcp@latest

claude mcp add postman-explore-pp-mcp -- postman-explore-pp-mcp

Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

Check if installed: which postman-explore-pp-cli If not found, offer to install (see Prerequisites at the top of this skill).
Match the user query to the best command from the Unique Capabilities and Command Reference above.

Execute with the --agent flag:

postman-explore-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent

If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help: postman-explore-pp-cli <command> --help.

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