soccer-goat — Printing Press CLI
Prerequisites: Install the CLI
This skill drives the soccer-goat-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 soccer-goat --cli-only - Verify:
soccer-goat-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/media-and-entertainment/soccer-goat/cmd/soccer-goat-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.
soccer-goat resolves a name once and fans out to Transfermarkt market value, EA Sports FC ratings and attribute stats, sofifa/fifacm potential, and ESPN context, then merges them into a single report. A local SQLite store unlocks cross-source queries no single site can answer: over/under-rated vs the market, potential growth gaps, and wonderkid scouting.
When to Use This CLI
Use soccer-goat when you want a player's or club's market value, game rating, potential, and stats together in one shot, or when you want to run cross-source queries like over/under-rated or wonderkid scouting that need value and rating joined locally. It is the right tool any time the answer spans Transfermarkt plus EA FC plus FIFA-style potential.
Anti-triggers
Do not use this CLI for:
- Do not use for live match scores or fixtures; use a dedicated ESPN or scores tool.
- Do not use for fantasy-football price/points optimization; it reports market value and game ratings, not FPL prices.
- Do not use for betting odds.
Unique Capabilities
These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.
Cross-source reports
player— Type any player name and get market value, EA FC rating, potential, and key stats in one report.Reach for this first: it answers what's he worth, how good is he, how good will he get, in one call.
soccer-goat-pp-cli player schjelderup --jsonteam— Type a club name and get the full squad with each player's market value and rating, plus squad totals.Use for scouting a whole squad's value and quality at once instead of N single lookups.
soccer-goat-pp-cli team benfica --jsoncompare— Side-by-side value, rating, potential, and stats for two players.Settle debates with value + rating + potential + stats in one view.
soccer-goat-pp-cli compare mbappe haaland --json
Local joins that compound
over-under-rated— Flag players whose transfer-market value is far above or below their EA game rating.Surfaces market bargains and hype the raw rating alone can't show.
soccer-goat-pp-cli over-under-rated --team benfica --jsonpotential-gap— Rank players by headroom (potential minus current rating).Find who still has the most room to grow. Best-effort on potential source.
soccer-goat-pp-cli potential-gap --team benfica --jsonwonderkids— Find young players with high potential and rising market value.The scouting query football data tools can't run because the inputs live in different silos.
soccer-goat-pp-cli wonderkids --team benfica --max-age 21 --json
Command Reference
clubs — Manage clubs
soccer-goat-pp-cli clubs <club_name>— Search Clubs
competitions — Manage competitions
soccer-goat-pp-cli competitions <competition_name>— Search Competitions
players — Manage players
soccer-goat-pp-cli players <player_name>— Search Players
Finding the right command
When you know what you want to do but not which command does it, ask the CLI directly:
soccer-goat-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
Full player report
soccer-goat-pp-cli player schjelderup
One name in, market value + EA rating + potential + key stats out.
Squad board
soccer-goat-pp-cli team benfica --json --select players.name,players.marketValue,players.rating
Narrow a large squad payload to just name, value, and rating.
Find market bargains
soccer-goat-pp-cli over-under-rated --team benfica
Players the game rates high but the market rates low, and vice versa.
Scout wonderkids
soccer-goat-pp-cli wonderkids --max-age 21 --team benfica
Young, high-potential, rising-value players in one filtered list.
Auth Setup
No authentication required.
Run soccer-goat-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.
Data source (Transfermarkt) and outages
Market value / squad / identity data comes from a Transfermarkt API instance. The CLI ships an ordered default list and fails over automatically on 5xx/unreachable; a source that answers (including "not found") is used as-is.
If player/team/compare exit with code 5 and a "data source is unavailable" hint, every configured Transfermarkt source is down. Recovery, in order of preference:
# See which sources are up:
soccer-goat-pp-cli doctor --agent # inspect the "sources" array
# Point at a known-working instance for this run (wins over everything, no failover):
soccer-goat-pp-cli player "<name>" --base-url https://your-instance.example --agent
# Or set an ordered failover list for the session:
export SOCCER_GOAT_BASE_URLS=https://a.example,https://b.example
# Most reliable: self-host felipeall/transfermarkt-api (Docker) and point at it:
docker run -p 8000:8000 felipeall/transfermarkt-api:latest
soccer-goat-pp-cli player "<name>" --base-url http://localhost:8000 --agent
Resolution precedence: --base-url > SOCCER_GOAT_BASE_URL > base_url config > SOCCER_GOAT_BASE_URLS > base_urls config > default list. The public instances are best-effort, not guaranteed; self-hosting is the durable path.
Agent Mode
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:soccer-goat-pp-cli clubs mock-value --agent --select id,name,statusPreviewable —
--dry-runshows the request without sendingOffline-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
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 setSOCCER_GOAT_HOME=<dir>to relocate all four path kinds under one root.Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge:
SOCCER_GOAT_CONFIG_DIR,SOCCER_GOAT_DATA_DIR,SOCCER_GOAT_STATE_DIR,SOCCER_GOAT_CACHE_DIR.Resolution order is per-kind env var,
--home,SOCCER_GOAT_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
soccer-goat-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": { "soccer-goat": { "command": "soccer-goat-pp-mcp", "env": { "SOCCER_GOAT_HOME": "/srv/soccer-goat" } } } }
Fleet precedence: an inherited per-kind env var overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use SOCCER_GOAT_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 SOCCER_GOAT_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:
soccer-goat-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>", "soccer-goat-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 `soccer-goat-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; soccer-goat-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 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. Runsoccer-goat-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.
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:
soccer-goat-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.
soccer-goat-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).
soccer-goat-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.
soccer-goat-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
soccer-goat-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-learnon a single command short-circuits bothrecalland theteachwrite path. Use for deterministic agent flows or tests that must not be affected by accumulated learnings.SOCCER_GOAT_NO_LEARN=truein the environment globally disables the pipeline.
Agent Feedback
When you (or the agent) notice something off about this CLI, record it:
soccer-goat-pp-cli feedback "the --since flag is inclusive but docs say exclusive"
soccer-goat-pp-cli feedback --stdin < notes.txt
soccer-goat-pp-cli feedback list --json --limit 10
Entries are stored locally as feedback.jsonl under the resolved data dir. They are never POSTed unless SOCCER_GOAT_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or SOCCER_GOAT_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.
soccer-goat-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
soccer-goat-pp-cli --profile briefing clubs mock-value
soccer-goat-pp-cli profile list --json
soccer-goat-pp-cli profile show briefing
soccer-goat-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→ showsoccer-goat-pp-cli --helpoutput - Starts with
install→ ends withmcp→ 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/media-and-entertainment/soccer-goat/cmd/soccer-goat-pp-mcp@latest - Register with Claude Code:
claude mcp add soccer-goat-pp-mcp -- soccer-goat-pp-mcp - Verify:
claude mcp list
Direct Use
- Check if installed:
which soccer-goat-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:soccer-goat-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent - If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help:
soccer-goat-pp-cli <command> --help.