| name | pp-vehicle-safety | |||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| description | Build source-attributed vehicle safety dossiers, honest comparisons, and recall-change reports from NHTSA data. Trigger phrases: `check this VIN`, `compare two cars for safety`, `watch my fleet for recalls`, `show NHTSA complaints`, `use vehicle safety`, `run vehicle safety`. | |||||||||||||||||
| author | avanderheyde | |||||||||||||||||
| license | Apache-2.0 | |||||||||||||||||
| argument-hint | <command> [args] | install cli|mcp | |||||||||||||||||
| allowed-tools | Read Bash | |||||||||||||||||
| metadata |
|
This skill drives the vehicle-safety-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. It defaults binaries to
$HOME/.local/binon macOS/Linux and%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\binon Windows:npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install vehicle-safety --cli-only
- Verify:
vehicle-safety-pp-cli --version - Ensure the reported install directory is on
$PATHfor 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:
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/other/vehicle-safety/cmd/vehicle-safety-pp-cli@latestIf --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.
Query NHTSA recalls, complaints, ratings, product catalogs, and VIN decoding, then preserve observations locally. Compound commands distinguish raw reports from rates and model-wide campaigns from VIN-specific open recalls.
Use this CLI for vehicle recall, complaint, crash-rating, and VIN research that benefits from reproducible local history. Prefer its compound commands when an agent needs evidence and caveats, not merely one raw response.
Do not use this CLI for:
- Do not use it for bulk commercial VIN sweeps.
- Do not treat complaint counts as failure rates or the compound output as a safety certification.
- Do not use it to file complaints or perform vehicle repairs.
These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.
-
dossier— See identity, recall and complaint summaries, and available crash ratings in one source-attributed report; add --include-records for complete source records.Use this instead of stitching several NHTSA responses together manually.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli dossier --year 2020 --make Honda --model Civic --agent
-
signals— Place complaint and recall events on one normalized timeline and identify the official flat-file sources required for investigations and communications.Use this to inspect structured precursor signals without causal or rate claims.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli signals --year 2020 --make Honda --model Civic --agent
-
compare— Compare two model years while keeping raw complaint counts and missing denominators explicit.Use this for a defensible comparison rather than a synthetic risk score.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli compare '2020 Honda Civic' '2020 Toyota Corolla' --agent
-
recall-coverage— Decode one VIN, list matching model-level campaigns, and keep VIN eligibility and repair status explicitly unverified with a link to NHTSA's official lookup.Use this when model recall eligibility and VIN open-recall status must not be conflated.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli recall-coverage 1HGCV1F34LA000001 --agent
-
watch— Report newly observed recall campaigns and remedy changes for saved vehicles.Use this for finite, auditable fleet change detection.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli watch --garage vehicles.csv --agent
-
bulletin-bridge— Show structured complaint and manufacturer-communication co-occurrence candidates.Use this for auditable overlap without semantic or causal inference.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli bulletin-bridge --year 2020 --make Honda --model Civic --communications-file communications.tsv --agent
complaints — Manage complaints
vehicle-safety-pp-cli complaints— List owner complaints for a model year, make, and model
products — Manage products
vehicle-safety-pp-cli products list-vehicle-makes— List makes for a model year and issue typevehicle-safety-pp-cli products list-vehicle-model-years— List vehicle model years for an issue typevehicle-safety-pp-cli products list-vehicle-models— List models for a make, model year, and issue type
recalls — Manage recalls
vehicle-safety-pp-cli recalls get-campaign— Get a recall by NHTSA campaign numbervehicle-safety-pp-cli recalls list-by-vehicle— List recalls for a model year, make, and model
safety-ratings — Manage safety ratings
vehicle-safety-pp-cli safety-ratings get— Get crash ratings for a NHTSA vehicle IDvehicle-safety-pp-cli safety-ratings list-by-vehicle— List crash-rating vehicle variants
vehicles — Manage vehicles
vehicle-safety-pp-cli vehicles <vin>— Decode a VIN into normalized vehicle attributes
When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:
vehicle-safety-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.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli recalls list-by-vehicle --make Honda --model Civic --model-year 2020 --agent --select results.NHTSACampaignNumber,results.Component,results.RemedyReturn only campaign, component, and remedy evidence.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli compare '2020 Honda Civic' '2020 Toyota Corolla' --agentCompare source records without inventing a risk score.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli recall-coverage 1HGCV1F34LA000001 --agentDecode the VIN and list model-level campaigns while linking to the official lookup for unverified VIN repair status.
No authentication required.
Run vehicle-safety-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.
Add --agent to any command. Expands to: --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes.
-
Pipeable — JSON on stdout, errors on stderr
-
Filterable —
--selectkeeps a subset of fields. Dotted paths descend into nested structures; arrays traverse element-wise. Critical for keeping context small on verbose APIs:vehicle-safety-pp-cli safety-ratings get mock-value --agent --select id,name,status
-
Previewable —
--dry-runshows 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
-
Read-only — do not use this CLI for create, update, delete, publish, comment, upvote, invite, order, send, or other mutating requests
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 AND no machine-format flag (--json, --csv, --compact, --quiet, --plain, --select) is set — piped/agent consumers and explicit-format runs get pure JSON on stdout.
Agents should treat the CLI's path resolver as part of the runtime contract:
-
Use
--home <dir>for one invocation, or setVEHICLE_SAFETY_HOME=<dir>to relocate all four path kinds under one root. -
Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge:
VEHICLE_SAFETY_CONFIG_DIR,VEHICLE_SAFETY_DATA_DIR,VEHICLE_SAFETY_STATE_DIR,VEHICLE_SAFETY_CACHE_DIR. -
Resolution order is per-kind env var,
--home,VEHICLE_SAFETY_HOME, XDG (XDG_CONFIG_HOME,XDG_DATA_HOME,XDG_STATE_HOME,XDG_CACHE_HOME), then platform defaults. -
configcontains settings likeconfig.tomland profiles.datacontainscredentials.toml,data.db, cookies, and auth sidecars.statecontains persisted queries, jobs, andteach.log.cachecontains regenerable HTTP/cache files. -
Stored secrets live in
credentials.tomlunder the data dir. Existing legacyconfig.tomlsecrets are read for compatibility and leaveconfig.tomlon the first auth write. -
Run
vehicle-safety-pp-cli doctor --fail-on warnto surface path and credential-location warnings.agent-contextexposes a schema v4pathsblock for agents that need the resolved dirs. -
For MCP, pass relocation through the MCP host config. The MCP binary does not inherit CLI flags:
{ "mcpServers": { "vehicle-safety": { "command": "vehicle-safety-pp-mcp", "env": { "VEHICLE_SAFETY_HOME": "/srv/vehicle-safety" } } } }
Fleet precedence: an inherited per-kind env var overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use VEHICLE_SAFETY_HOME or per-kind vars as durable fleet levers, and use --home only for a single invocation. Relocation is not reversible by unsetting env vars; move files manually before clearing VEHICLE_SAFETY_HOME, or doctor will not find credentials left under the former root.
This CLI ships a self-capturing learning loop. The CLI does its own bookkeeping: every invocation is journaled locally, a failed flag followed by a corrected retry auto-derives a flag_alias candidate, and a teach on a query family without a playbook auto-synthesizes a playbook_candidate from the session's journal. Your job is judgment only: recall first, act on surfaced candidates, teach the final answer, playbook amend when you observe a correction. You never record failures by hand.
Before list/search/drill commands on a new user question, run:
vehicle-safety-pp-cli recall "<user's question>" --agentThe response envelope:
{
"query": "...",
"normalized": "<normalized form>",
"query_entities": ["..."],
"found": true | false,
"match_score": 0.0,
"results": [
{ "resource_id": "...", "resource_type": "...", "venue": "...",
"confidence": 2, "entity_match": "exact|partial|unknown",
"source": "taught|preseed|pattern", "warnings": ["..."] }
],
"mismatches": [ /* only when --debug-mismatches */ ],
"warnings": [ /* top-level */ ],
"candidates": [
{ "id": 12, "class": "flag_alias | playbook_candidate",
"summary": "...", "sightings": 3, "last_seen": "...",
"rationale": "...",
"next_action": ["<trial command>", "vehicle-safety-pp-cli learnings confirm 12"] }
],
"playbook": {
"query_family": "...",
"playbook": {
"steps": [ { "cmd": "<command with {slot} substitution>", "purpose": "..." } ],
"entity_slots": ["$ENTITY"],
"expected_tool_calls": 3
},
"slots_resolved": { "$ENTITY": { "token": "<live token>", "canonical": "<canonical>" } },
"notes": "<workarounds + gotchas for this query family>"
},
"notes": "<duplicate surface for non-playbook callers>"
}Empty-store short-circuit: if the store has no learnings, playbooks, or candidates yet (recall finds nothing and learnings list and learnings candidates are both empty), skip recall for the rest of this session instead of taxing every query; resume recall-first once something has been taught.
Read candidates, playbook, notes, results[0], and warnings in that order:
if Candidates present (warnings include "candidates_present"):
-> candidates are try-then-confirm, never facts. Follow each candidate's
two-step next_action verbatim: run the trial command first, then run
`learnings confirm <id>` only after the trial verified the behavior.
Reject a wrong candidate with `learnings reject <id>`.
-> NEVER re-teach something recall surfaced as a candidate; confirm or
reject that candidate instead of teaching a duplicate.
-> candidates ride alongside playbooks and resource hits, not instead of
them; continue with the branches below after acting on them.
if Playbook present:
-> READ Playbook.notes verbatim FIRST (workarounds + gotchas the CLI surface doesn't expose)
-> replay Playbook.steps in order, substituting Playbook.slots_resolved entries
for the entity slot tokens. If a step's slot is unresolved, fall back to
discovery for that step only.
-> the Playbook's expected_tool_calls is a budget; if you find yourself running
materially more, record the divergence via `vehicle-safety-pp-cli playbook amend`
at end-of-session.
elif Notes present (no Playbook):
-> read Notes verbatim before any discovery step; they carry known gotchas
for this query family even when no structured choreography exists yet.
elif Found AND Results[0].EntityMatch == "exact" AND Results[0].Confidence >= 2:
-> skip discovery; fetch live data for Results[*].ResourceID in parallel
elif Found AND Results[0].EntityMatch == "partial":
-> candidate hint, NOT a hit; read the resource title to validate before trusting
elif (any row in Mismatches[] when --debug-mismatches was passed):
-> treat as cold start; the stored learning is for a different entity
(different canonical resolved from query_entities)
else: // Found == false, no playbook, no notes
-> cold start; run discovery normally; teach the answer afterward (Step 4).
If the family has no playbook yet, that teach auto-synthesizes a
playbook candidate from this session's journal - you do not need to
record one by hand.
Playbook and Notes are orthogonal to the per-resource path. A recall response can carry both a Playbook AND a Results[] hit - use both: the Playbook tells you which choreography to run; the resource hits short-circuit specific steps. Default to skipping mismatches; pass --debug-mismatches only when investigating cold-start surprises.
Candidate judgment details: learnings confirm <id> prints the candidate's full payload before materializing it - check that the printed payload matches the behavior you verified. learnings reject <id> tombstones the derivation signature so the same candidate does not resurface. The envelope carries only the few candidates worth acting on now; vehicle-safety-pp-cli learnings candidates lists the full open set.
Graceful degradation: if learnings confirm is an unknown command, you are driving an older binary - ignore the candidates guidance and follow the rest of the protocol.
low_confidence: row exists atconfidence<2. Treat as a hint, not a skip-discovery hit.resource_not_in_store: the local store doesn't have the resource the learning points at. The match validator couldn't classify entities — direct-fetch and re-evaluate.cross_alias_match(per-result): the row was taught under a different alias and matched the live query's canonical viaentity_lookups(e.g., a "USA" teach satisfying a "United States" recall). Trust the resource_id.similar_shape_different_entity:<canonical>(top-level): a structurally matching row exists but its canonical entity differs from the live query's. Treated as cold start; the warning carries the conflicting canonical as a hint, but the row is NOT promoted into Results.ambiguous_alias(top-level): a single query entity resolved to multiple canonicals (e.g., "Cards" → Arizona Cardinals + St. Louis Cardinals). Surface the ambiguity from context before committing to a resource.candidates_present(top-level): the envelope carries acandidatessection. Handle it via the candidates branch in Step 2 before anything else.lookup_refresh_available(top-level): an entity in the query has no lookup row yet, but synced data could provide one. Runvehicle-safety-pp-cli syncto refresh entity lookups.- Top-level
no_learnings_for_query_family: the table had no rows above the Jaccard floor. Pure cold start.
Teaching is unconditional. After resolving a query the store could not answer, background-teach the final resource mapping - no call-count threshold, no judging whether it was "worth" learning. The teach is the anchor of the loop: it triggers playbook synthesis for a family without a playbook, and same-referent phrasings fold into one family so near-duplicate teaches do not fragment the store. Fire it after assembling your user-facing response but BEFORE emitting it, with a shell & so the call returns immediately:
vehicle-safety-pp-cli teach --query "<user's question>" --resource-type <type> --resource <id1> --resource <id2>
# (append shell `&` to background it)Silent on success. Errors only land in teach.log under the resolved state dir. Teach the most specific resource - if the user asked a broad question and you walked through parent records to find the specific answer, teach the leaf id, not the parent. The CLI uses seeded entity_lookups for cross-alias resolution at recall time, so a teach under one alias (e.g., "Niners") satisfies future queries under another alias (e.g., "49ers", "San Francisco") automatically.
PII rule: teach the structural question with identifiers stripped - never include names, emails, phone numbers, account ids, or other personal identifiers in taught queries or notes. The CLI scans teach queries for obvious email/phone shapes and warns, but does not block; strip before teaching rather than relying on the warning.
You do not need to decide whether a session "deserves" a playbook: a teach on a family without one auto-synthesizes a playbook_candidate from the session's journal, and the next session judges it via confirm/reject. Attach explicit playbook flags only when you already hold choreography worth recording verbatim - workarounds the CLI didn't surface (silently-dropped flags, undocumented params, pagination tricks, payload gotchas). Prefer the integrated one-call form - record the resource learning and the playbook in the same teach invocation:
# Common case: record both the resource learning AND the playbook in one call.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli teach \
--query "<user's question>" \
--resource <id> \
--playbook-file ~/playbooks/<shape>.json \
--playbook-notes-file ~/playbooks/<shape>-notes.md
# (append shell `&` to background it)
# Alternate: playbook-only (no resource to record alongside).
vehicle-safety-pp-cli teach-playbook \
--query "<user's question>" \
--playbook-file ~/playbooks/<shape>.json \
--notes-file ~/playbooks/<shape>-notes.mdPlaybook files are JSON with steps, entity_slots, expected_tool_calls. Notes files are markdown carrying the gotchas verbatim. File-free callers (MCP-only agents) pass the same content inline: --playbook-json and --playbook-notes on the integrated teach form, --playbook-json and --notes on teach-playbook. On the integrated teach form, the playbook flags are optional - omit them entirely for a resource-only teach. On the standalone teach-playbook form, at least one of the playbook and notes flags must be set; both empty is rejected. Playbooks are keyed on the structural query family (entities stripped) so a recipe taught from one entity-shaped query applies to every other query of the same shape, with slots_resolved binding the live query's canonical at recall time.
When you DO find a playbook on a future recall, treat it as ground truth: replay the steps with slots_resolved substitutions, skip the discovery that the choreography already documents, and read notes before any step.
If your debug-protocol response identifies a concrete correction the notes or playbook should know — a workaround, an undocumented endpoint shape, a stale field name, observed schema drift, an empty-payload fallback — fire playbook amend BEFORE emitting your user-facing response. Same fire-and-forget posture as teach.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli playbook amend \
--query "<exact recall query string>" \
--add-note "<your concrete correction>"
# (append shell `&` to background it)What counts as worth amending: a behavior you OBSERVED this session that future-you would benefit from knowing. Examples worth amending:
- A workaround for a CLI surface that silently drops or misorders a flag.
- An undocumented endpoint shape (response wrapped in
{meta, results}, payload nested two levels deeper than the docs claim). - Observed schema drift (a field renamed, an index that shifted between seasons, a category label that the API now returns lower-cased).
What does NOT belong in notes:
- The year-specific or entity-specific answer to the user's question. That's the response, not a learning.
- Per-team / per-athlete / per-row data the playbook already retrieves at runtime.
- Statements that paraphrase what the existing notes already say.
The amend command appends to the family's existing notes with a timestamped marker ([amend YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MMZ]: <text>). Multiple amends accumulate; the audit trail is visible. If no playbook exists yet for the family, amend creates a notes-only one (so cold-start corrections still land).
playbook amend notes are designed to potentially flow upstream as shared knowledge in future versions of the Printing Press. Keep them clean of user-identifying content so the upstream-contribution path stays open without retroactive scrubbing:
- Do NOT embed paths to user filesystems, personal API keys or tokens, user email addresses, user GitHub handles, or specific query histories tied to a single user.
- Acceptable: endpoint shapes, undocumented field names, API gotchas, observed schema drift, workarounds for CLI surfaces, generalizable pagination or retry tactics.
If a correction is only meaningful with user-specific context, it belongs in a personal note, not in the playbook amend.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli learnings stats reports recall hit rate, teach-to-reuse, playbook resolution rate, and candidate confirm/reject counts from the local learn_events table. Rates are null until they have a denominator; everything stays on this machine. Use it to check whether the loop is earning its keep for this CLI.
--no-learnon a single command short-circuits bothrecalland theteachwrite path. Use for deterministic agent flows or tests that must not be affected by accumulated learnings.VEHICLE_SAFETY_NO_LEARN=truein the environment globally disables the pipeline.
When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:
vehicle-safety-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
vehicle-safety-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
vehicle-safety-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10
Entries are stored locally as feedback.jsonl under the resolved data dir. They are never POSTed unless VEHICLE_SAFETY_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or VEHICLE_SAFETY_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.
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.
A profile is a saved set of flag values, reused across invocations. Use it when a scheduled or recurring agent reuses the same saved flags while providing different input each run.
vehicle-safety-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
vehicle-safety-pp-cli --profile briefing safety-ratings get mock-value
vehicle-safety-pp-cli profile list --json
vehicle-safety-pp-cli profile show briefing
vehicle-safety-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.
| 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 |
Parse $ARGUMENTS:
- Empty,
help, or--help→ showvehicle-safety-pp-cli --helpoutput - Starts with
install→ ends withmcp→ MCP installation; otherwise → see Prerequisites above - Anything else → Direct Use (execute as CLI command with
--agent)
- Install the MCP server:
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/other/vehicle-safety/cmd/vehicle-safety-pp-mcp@latest
- Register with Claude Code:
claude mcp add vehicle-safety-pp-mcp -- vehicle-safety-pp-mcp
- Verify:
claude mcp list
- Check if installed:
which vehicle-safety-pp-cliIf 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
--agentflag:vehicle-safety-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent
- If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help:
vehicle-safety-pp-cli <command> --help.