Pp Respondio

Respond.io — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the respondio-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:

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

2. Verify: respondio-pp-cli --version
3. Ensure the reported install directory is on $PATH for 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 1.26.5 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/social-and-messaging/respondio/cmd/respondio-pp-cli@latest

If --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.

respondio-pp-cli wraps the full Respond.io Unification API v2 - contacts, messaging, conversations, comments, and workspace - then syncs contacts, users, and channels into a local SQLite store. Offline you can segment by tag, find custom-field gaps, check channel mix, and gauge workload by agent with --json output built for agents.

When to Use This CLI

Use respondio-pp-cli for Respond.io support/sales operations: looking up contacts, sending messages, routing and assigning conversations, and answering inbox questions offline (channel mix, tag cohorts, custom-field gaps, workload by agent). It is the right choice when you want agent-native --json output and a local mirror instead of one-off API calls.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do not use this CLI for deep Respond.io analytics that need historical message-by-message mining (the mirror is a snapshot).
• Do not use it to configure Respond.io workspace settings outside the exposed endpoints.
• Do not use it as a replacement for the Respond.io web product for manual conversation handling.

Unique Capabilities

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

Local state that compounds

• overview — One-command summary of open conversations, unassigned contacts, per-agent distribution, and recent activity.

  Use instead of a dozen API calls when you need the current inbox load at a glance.

  respondio-pp-cli overview --json
  

• report workload — Per-agent message and conversation handling volume from the synced workspace.

  Balance the team and spot overloaded agents without manual tallying.

  respondio-pp-cli report workload --json
  

Segment & find

• report channel-mix — See which messaging channels (WhatsApp, Instagram, email...) your contacts actually use.

  Answer 'where do our customers talk to us' instantly from local data.

  respondio-pp-cli report channel-mix --json
  

• contact by-tag — List every contact that carries a given tag (VIP, unpaid, in-trial).

  Pull a whole segment for campaigns or support outreach in one command.

  respondio-pp-cli contact by-tag VIP --json
  

• contact field-gaps — Find contacts missing a custom field value (e.g. no orderId or region).

  Spot data quality gaps to drive clean-up or re-enrichment.

  respondio-pp-cli contact field-gaps --name orderId --json
  

• contact idle — Find unassigned contacts with no recent activity worth working.

  Route idle work before it goes cold.

  respondio-pp-cli contact idle --days 7 --json
  

Agent-native plumbing

• contact search — Free-text search across synced contacts without hitting the API.

  Find a customer by name/email offline, fast, without api.respond.io.

  respondio-pp-cli contact search --query acme --json
  

Command Reference

comment — Add internal comments to contacts

• respondio-pp-cli comment <identifier> — Create an internal comment on a contact

contact — Manage Respond.io contacts and contact-level actions

• respondio-pp-cli contact add-tags — Add tags to a contact
• respondio-pp-cli contact create — Create a new contact (identifier must be email: or phone:)
• respondio-pp-cli contact delete — Delete a contact
• respondio-pp-cli contact get — Get a contact by identifier (id:123, email:user@example.com, phone:+1234567890)
• respondio-pp-cli contact list — List contacts with optional search and filters
• respondio-pp-cli contact list-channels — List all channels connected to a contact
• respondio-pp-cli contact merge — Merge two contacts into one
• respondio-pp-cli contact remove-tags — Remove tags from a contact
• respondio-pp-cli contact update — Update an existing contact
• respondio-pp-cli contact update-lifecycle — Update a contact's lifecycle stage
• respondio-pp-cli contact upsert — Create or update a contact keyed by email/phone identifier

conversation — Manage conversation assignment and status

• respondio-pp-cli conversation assign — Assign or unassign a conversation
• respondio-pp-cli conversation update-status — Open or close a conversation

message — Send and retrieve messages for a contact

• respondio-pp-cli message get — Get a message by ID
• respondio-pp-cli message list — List messages for a contact
• respondio-pp-cli message send — Send a message to a contact

space — Respond.io workspace-level operations

• respondio-pp-cli space create-custom-field — Create a custom field definition
• respondio-pp-cli space create-tag — Create a workspace tag
• respondio-pp-cli space delete-tag — Delete a workspace tag
• respondio-pp-cli space get-custom-field — Get a custom field by ID
• respondio-pp-cli space get-user — Get a user by ID
• respondio-pp-cli space list-channels — List all channels in the workspace
• respondio-pp-cli space list-closing-notes — List closing note categories
• respondio-pp-cli space list-custom-fields — List all custom field definitions
• respondio-pp-cli space list-templates — List message templates for a channel
• respondio-pp-cli space list-users — List users in the workspace
• respondio-pp-cli space update-tag — Update a workspace tag

Finding the right command

When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:

respondio-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

Inbox load at a glance

respondio-pp-cli overview --json

Summarize open conversations, unassigned contacts, and activity.

Narrow a contact payload

respondio-pp-cli contact get id:123 --agent --select firstName,email,lifecycle

Keep context small by selecting only the fields you need.

Find data-quality gaps

respondio-pp-cli contact field-gaps --name orderId --json

List contacts missing a custom field to drive enrichment.

Where customers talk to you

respondio-pp-cli report channel-mix --json

Show the channel-source distribution across synced contacts.

Team workload

respondio-pp-cli report workload --json

Per-agent handling volume from synced assignments.

Auth Setup

Auth uses a Respond.io API access token (Settings > Integrations > Developer API). Set RESPOND_IO_API_TOKEN and run respondio-pp-cli auth login. All commands are read-mostly; mutations support --dry-run.

Run respondio-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:

  respondio-pp-cli contact list --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

• Explicit retries — use --idempotent only when an already-existing create should count as success, and use --ignore-missing only when a missing delete target should count as success

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 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.

Paths and state

Agents should treat the CLI's path resolver as part of the runtime contract:

• Use --home <dir> for one invocation, or set RESPONDIO_HOME=<dir> to relocate all four path kinds under one root.

• Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge: RESPONDIO_CONFIG_DIR, RESPONDIO_DATA_DIR, RESPONDIO_STATE_DIR, RESPONDIO_CACHE_DIR.

• Resolution order is per-kind env var, --home, RESPONDIO_HOME, XDG (XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_STATE_HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME), then platform defaults.

• config contains settings like config.toml and profiles. data contains credentials.toml, data.db, cookies, and auth sidecars. state contains persisted queries, jobs, and teach.log. cache contains regenerable HTTP/cache files.

• Stored secrets live in credentials.toml under the data dir. Existing legacy config.toml secrets are read for compatibility and leave config.toml on the first auth write.

• Run respondio-pp-cli doctor --fail-on warn to surface path and credential-location warnings. agent-context exposes a schema v4 paths block 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": {
      "respondio": {
        "command": "respondio-pp-mcp",
        "env": {
          "RESPONDIO_HOME": "/srv/respondio"
        }
      }
    }
  }
  

Fleet precedence: an inherited per-kind env var overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use RESPONDIO_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 RESPONDIO_HOME, or doctor will not find credentials left under the former root.

Automatic learning

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.

Step 1: recall before any discovery

Before list/search/drill commands on a new user question, run:

respondio-pp-cli recall "<user's question>" --agent

The 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>", "respondio-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.

Step 2: decision tree

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 `respondio-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; respondio-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.

Step 3: always read warnings

• low_confidence: row exists at confidence<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 via entity_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 a candidates section. 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. Run respondio-pp-cli sync to refresh entity lookups.
• Top-level no_learnings_for_query_family: the table had no rows above the Jaccard floor. Pure cold start.

Step 4: teach & after finalizing your response - always

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:

respondio-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.

Step 5: playbooks - optional flags, automatic synthesis

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.
respondio-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).
respondio-pp-cli teach-playbook \
  --query "<user's question>" \
  --playbook-file ~/playbooks/<shape>.json \
  --notes-file ~/playbooks/<shape>-notes.md

Playbook 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.

Step 6: playbook amend & when your debug response identifies a correction

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.

respondio-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).

PII discipline for amend notes

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.

Measuring the loop

respondio-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.

Disabling learning

• --no-learn on a single command short-circuits both recall and the teach write path. Use for deterministic agent flows or tests that must not be affected by accumulated learnings.
• RESPONDIO_NO_LEARN=true in the environment globally disables the pipeline.

Agent Feedback

When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:

respondio-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
respondio-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
respondio-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10

Entries are stored locally as feedback.jsonl under the resolved data dir. They are never POSTed unless RESPONDIO_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or RESPONDIO_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:

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 or recurring agent reuses the same saved flags while providing different input each run.

respondio-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
respondio-pp-cli --profile briefing contact list
respondio-pp-cli profile list --json
respondio-pp-cli profile show briefing
respondio-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

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

1. Empty, help, or --help → show respondio-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:

   go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/social-and-messaging/respondio/cmd/respondio-pp-mcp@latest
   

2. Register with Claude Code:

   claude mcp add respondio-pp-mcp -- respondio-pp-mcp
   

3. Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

1. Check if installed: which respondio-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:

   respondio-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent
   

4. If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help: respondio-pp-cli <command> --help.