# Pp Grants > Find open US federal research funding and benchmark award sizes — Grants.gov open opportunities plus awarded NIH RePORTER and NSF grants, keyless. Trigger phrases: `open research grants`, `grants.gov search`, `NIH funding for`, `NSF awards for`, `grant deadline before`, `use grants`, `run grants`. - Skill: `mvanhorn-printing-press-libra/pp-grants` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds add mvanhorn-printing-press-libra/pp-grants` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/mvanhorn-printing-press-libra/pp-grants/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Research & Search - License: Apache-2.0 - Author: mvanhorn (https://skillmd.com/u/mvanhorn-printing-press-libra) - Updated: 2026-09-09 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/mvanhorn-printing-press-libra/pp-grants --- # Research Grants Finder — Printing Press CLI ## Prerequisites: Install the CLI This skill drives the `grants-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. It defaults binaries to `$HOME/.local/bin` on macOS/Linux and `%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin` on Windows: ```bash npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install grants --cli-only ``` 2. Verify with the `version` subcommand. 3. Ensure the reported install directory is on `$PATH` for the agent/runtime that will invoke this skill. No API key is required — all three upstream APIs (Grants.gov Search2, NIH RePORTER, NSF Awards) are public and keyless. > Note: this CLI uses the Go standard-library `flag` package rather than cobra, so > its usage examples below are shown as plain text. Run the `help` subcommand for > the authoritative flag list; behavior is identical to the recipes shown. ## What it does - `search` — **open** federal funding opportunities from Grants.gov (NIH, NSF, and every other federal agency). - `nih` — **awarded** NIH projects from RePORTER, sorted by award size, to benchmark how much a topic typically gets. Restricted to award types an external applicant can compete for; `include-centers` adds center, program and consortium awards, which are one to two orders of magnitude larger. A median accompanies the listing, because sorting by size shows the largest awards rather than representative ones. - `nsf` — **awarded** NSF grants. - `doctor` — live health check of all three upstream APIs. Every command accepts a `json` flag for machine-readable output, and flags may appear anywhere on the command line. ## Recipes Find open opportunities, filter by deadline, agency, award size, or eligibility: ```text grants-pp-cli search "cancer imaging" grants-pp-cli search "cancer imaging" --closing-before 2026-12-31 --rows 50 grants-pp-cli search cancer --agency HHS-NIH11 --rows 10 grants-pp-cli search microbiome --details grants-pp-cli search microbiome --min-award 500000 grants-pp-cli search microbiome --eligibility "small business" ``` Notes on the search filters: - The deadline filter (`closing-before`, format YYYY-MM-DD) is applied client-side within the fetched page; a stderr warning appears when the page was full and the list may be truncated — raise the `rows` value for fuller coverage. - The agency filter takes a plain string agency code such as HHS-NIH11 or NSF. - The minimum-award filter uses awardCeiling with an estimatedFunding fallback, because Grants.gov often reports a zero ceiling; estimated values are labelled in the output. - The award and eligibility filters fetch per-opportunity details, so they are slower. Benchmark awarded funding for a topic: ```text grants-pp-cli nih "gut microbiome" --year 2025 --min-amount 1000000 grants-pp-cli nih "gut microbiome" --year 2025 --include-centers grants-pp-cli nsf "quantum computing" --rows 25 --min-amount 500000 ``` Notes on the NIH benchmark: - Results cover research project grants, high-risk awards and career transition awards — the types an individual investigator applies for. Procurement contracts and NIH intramural projects are excluded: neither is open to an outside applicant, and both are large enough to dominate a size-sorted list. - `include-centers` widens the search to center, program and consortium awards. These are competable but fund the running of a research center rather than a single research idea, and they are one to two orders of magnitude larger. - The listing is sorted by award size, so it shows the largest awards. Read the median line beneath it for what a typical award actually looks like — the two routinely differ by a factor of five or more. - The keyword is matched against project title and abstract only. RePORTER also indexes a machine-generated concept tag list, but those tags are attached independently of a project's subject and match facility and administrative awards. JSON output for scripting, and a health check before a session: ```text grants-pp-cli search cancer --rows 5 --json grants-pp-cli nih cancer --json grants-pp-cli doctor ``` The `nih` JSON payload carries a `typical_award` object alongside the projects, holding the median, the bracket it was located in, and the population it describes. ## Notes for agents - NIH/NSF results are **awarded** (historical) grants; open calls come only from the `search` command. - NSF results are pooled across several pages, deduplicated by title, matched on word stems and ranked with title hits first — a single upstream page is neither relevance-ordered nor complete. - Grants.gov dates in results are MM/DD/YYYY; the deadline filter takes YYYY-MM-DD. - Exit codes: 0 success, 1 upstream/API error, 2 usage error.