Pp Tella

Tella — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the tella-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 tella --cli-only
   

2. Verify: tella-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 1.26.6 or newer):

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/tella/cmd/tella-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.

When to Use This CLI

Reach for tella-pp-cli when you need agent-shaped Tella operations: scripted batch edits across a playlist, cross-video transcript search for an agent, webhook handler development without a tunnel, or programmatic export pipelines. The local SQLite store makes it ideal when an agent will issue many small queries against the same workspace.

Unique Capabilities

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

Local-first transcendence

• transcripts search — FTS5 search across every cached clip transcript in your workspace; returns video, clip, and timecode hits in milliseconds.

  Use this when an agent or human needs to find every video that mentioned a topic without rehydrating the workspace from the API.

  tella-pp-cli transcripts search "pricing change" --json --limit 10
  

• videos viewed — Roll up webhook view-milestone events into a per-video summary over a window (e.g. who crossed 75% in the last 7 days).

  Use this in a sales follow-up loop to triage prospects by engagement without scanning the dashboard.

  tella-pp-cli videos viewed --since 7d --milestone 75 --json
  

• workspace stats — Local aggregate of video count, clip count, total duration, transcript word count, and export count by month across the cached workspace.

  Use this for monthly creator-economy reports without dashboard scraping.

  tella-pp-cli workspace stats --json
  

Webhook tooling

• webhooks tail — Stream new webhook events from the inbox to stdout, and replay any prior message to a local URL with valid HMAC headers — no public tunnel needed.

  Use this when developing a webhook handler against Tella without exposing localhost via a tunnel.

  tella-pp-cli webhooks tail --follow --json
  

Bulk operations

• videos clips clean / videos clean — Preview and apply recoverable cleanup passes for one clip or every clip discovered from a video's official timeline.

  tella-pp-cli videos clips clean vid_abc cl_xyz \
    --remove-fillers --remove-silences natural \
    --find-mistakes --unofficial --dry-run
  tella-pp-cli videos clips clean vid_abc cl_xyz \
    --remove-fillers --remove-silences natural \
    --find-mistakes --unofficial --apply
  
  tella-pp-cli videos clips clean vid_abc cl_xyz \
    --range 1200:1800 --word-range 42:46 --dry-run
  
  tella-pp-cli videos clean vid_abc \
    --remove-fillers --remove-silences natural --dry-run
  tella-pp-cli videos clean vid_abc \
    --remove-fillers --remove-silences natural --apply
  

  clean snapshots existing cuts before applying, records the last cuts returned by successful cleanup, and batches manual playback ranges. Tella has no conditional cut update, so partial failures never auto-restore: the CLI re-fetches touched clips, reports recovery state, and keeps each snapshot. Undo first re-fetches and refuses if current cuts diverged from the snapshot's recorded post-clean state, but that check is advisory rather than atomic. Preview with videos clips undo-last-cuts <vid> <clipId> --dry-run; apply only with exclusive access by adding --apply --confirm-exclusive-editing.

  Official silence modes are natural (>800ms), fast (>500ms), and faster (>300ms). Legacy --remove-buffers remains supported with its exact --buffer-min-ms threshold (default 200ms), which is more aggressive than official faster; do not pass both options.

• clips edit-pass — Apply a chained set of edits (remove-fillers, remove-buffers, trim-edges, trim-silences-gt N, find-mistakes [unofficial]) across every clip in a playlist in one command.

  Use this to apply a creator's standard edit pass across an entire playlist without per-clip clicking.

  tella-pp-cli clips edit-pass --playlist plst_42 --remove-fillers --remove-buffers --trim-edges --dry-run
  

  Per-clip primitives also available individually:

  • videos clips remove-silences <vid> <clipId> --mode natural --apply — official Tella silence removal, preview by default.
  • videos clips remove-buffers <vid> <clipId> — legacy threshold behavior: cuts every silence ≥ --min-ms (default 200). Public API only.
  • videos clips trim-edges <vid> <clipId> — narrow primitive: cuts only the head and tail silences. Public API only.
  • videos clips find-mistakes <vid> <clipId> --unofficial — AI-driven mistake detection. Unofficial API — see below.

Unofficial API: Find Mistakes

Tella's web UI has a "Find mistakes" button on the Cut panel that calls an AI service. As of 2026-08-31 it remains absent from the public OpenAPI schema and MCP tool reference, so find-mistakes opts into the same internal endpoint the web app uses. This requires a session cookie copied from a logged-in browser.

# 1) In Chrome on tella.tv: DevTools → Application → Cookies → tella.tv
#    Right-click a row → Copy → Copy as cURL → grab the `Cookie: ...` line.
# 2) Set the env var to the raw cookie header value (NOT prefixed with "Cookie:"):
export TELLA_SESSION_COOKIE='__Secure-Tella.session=...; XSRF-TOKEN=...'

# 3) Run with --unofficial:
tella-pp-cli videos clips find-mistakes vid_abc cl_xyz --unofficial --json

Detection uses cookie auth against prod-stream.tella.tv; applying detected ranges uses the documented public batched /cut endpoint (Bearer auth, additive). Cookie expires periodically; refresh it from DevTools after HTTP 401.

Warning: the unofficial AI service can change or break without notice. Pin to a Tella web-app version if reliability matters.

• exports wait — Kick off exports for one or more videos and block until each is ready, short-circuiting on the Export ready webhook event.

  Use this in batch publishing scripts that need export URLs for downstream uploads.

  tella-pp-cli exports wait --video vid_1 --video vid_2 --timeout 10m --json
  

Transcript tooling

• Official transcript read/correction flow — Read stable cut-applied word indices, then preview and apply atomic transcript/caption corrections.

  tella-pp-cli videos clips get-transcript vid_abc cl_xyz --json
  tella-pp-cli videos clips update-transcript-words vid_abc cl_xyz \
    --words '[{"index":12,"text":"Tella"},{"index":18,"hidden":true}]' \
    --dry-run
  tella-pp-cli videos clips update-transcript-words vid_abc cl_xyz \
    --words '[{"index":12,"text":"Tella"},{"index":18,"hidden":true}]' \
    --apply
  

• clips transcript-diff — Diff a clip's cut transcript against its uncut transcript to surface every word that editing removed (filler, silence, hand-edit) with timecodes.

  Use this to audit what an automated edit pass actually changed before publishing.

  tella-pp-cli clips transcript-diff clp_abc --json
  

• clips captions — Format a clip's cut transcript as an SRT or VTT subtitle file ready to attach to an embed or upload.

  Use this to ship caption files alongside video embeds without round-tripping through a separate caption tool.

  tella-pp-cli clips captions clp_abc --format srt > captions.srt
  

Command Reference

playlists — Playlist operations

• tella-pp-cli playlists create — Create a new playlist for the authenticated user
• tella-pp-cli playlists delete — Permanently delete a playlist. Videos in the playlist are not deleted.
• tella-pp-cli playlists get — Returns detailed information about a playlist including its videos
• tella-pp-cli playlists list — Returns a list of all playlists for the authenticated user
• tella-pp-cli playlists update — Update a playlist's name and/or description

videos — Video operations

• tella-pp-cli videos delete — Permanently delete a video
• tella-pp-cli videos get — Returns detailed information about a video including chapters, transcript, and thumbnails
• tella-pp-cli videos list — Returns a paginated list of all videos for the authenticated user. Use playlistId query parameter to filter videos...
• tella-pp-cli videos update — Update a video's settings including viewer options, download permissions, access controls, and metadata. Some...

webhooks — Webhook endpoint management

• tella-pp-cli webhooks create-endpoint — Creates a new webhook endpoint to receive events. Returns the endpoint ID and signing secret.
• tella-pp-cli webhooks delete-endpoint — Permanently deletes a webhook endpoint
• tella-pp-cli webhooks get-endpoint-secret — Retrieves the signing secret for a webhook endpoint. Use this to verify incoming webhook payloads.
• tella-pp-cli webhooks get-message — Returns details of a specific webhook message by ID
• tella-pp-cli webhooks list-messages — Returns a list of recently sent webhook messages for debugging purposes

Finding the right command

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

tella-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 every video where a topic was discussed

tella-pp-cli transcripts search "checkout flow" --json --select hits.video_id,hits.clip_id,hits.snippet

FTS5 over cached transcripts; --select narrows the response to the fields an agent needs.

Roll up which prospects watched 75% this week

tella-pp-cli videos viewed --since 7d --milestone 75 --json

Reads cached webhook view-milestone events grouped by video and viewer.

Apply a creator's standard edit pass to a playlist

tella-pp-cli clips edit-pass --playlist plst_42 --remove-fillers --remove-buffers --trim-edges --dry-run

Iterates clips in a playlist and chains real mutation endpoints; legacy --remove-buffers uses its threshold-based public composition, --trim-edges cuts only head and tail silence, and --dry-run shows the plan envelope.

Inspect and safely edit a whole video

tella-pp-cli videos timeline vid_abc --include cuts,words --json
tella-pp-cli videos clean vid_abc --remove-fillers --remove-silences natural --dry-run
tella-pp-cli videos clean vid_abc --remove-fillers --remove-silences natural --apply

For audio, use the documented overrides or Studio Voice switch and explicitly apply them:

tella-pp-cli videos clips update vid_abc cl_xyz --microphone-volume 0.8 --system-audio-volume 0 --dry-run
tella-pp-cli videos clips update vid_abc cl_xyz --microphone-volume 0.8 --system-audio-volume 0 --apply
tella-pp-cli videos clips update vid_abc cl_xyz --microphone-volume inherit --system-audio-volume inherit --apply
tella-pp-cli videos update vid_abc --studio-voice true --dry-run
tella-pp-cli videos update vid_abc --studio-voice true --apply
tella-pp-cli videos clips update vid_abc cl_xyz --studio-voice false --apply

The CLI uses Tella's Studio Voice name and translates it to the public API's studioSound field. Video-wide enablement generates enhanced audio asynchronously and raw audio remains the fallback until it is ready. A clip-level false opts that clip out; true re-enables it under the video master switch. With --stdin, typed audio and Studio Voice flags override the same fields from the JSON body.

Whole-clip UI mute is not exposed in the current public schema/MCP reference, so do not invent a muted field. videos apply-edits is similarly limited to adding sound effects, text/media overlays, zooms, blurs, and highlights; it cannot create cuts.

Develop a webhook handler without ngrok

tella-pp-cli webhooks tail --once --json
tella-pp-cli webhooks replay <msg-id> --to http://localhost:8080/webhooks

webhooks tail snapshots the inbox; webhooks replay <msg-id> re-POSTs that message to a local URL with valid HMAC headers via the endpoint signing secret.

Export captions for a clip

tella-pp-cli clips captions clp_abc --format srt > captions.srt

Formats the cut transcript as a standard SRT file.

Auth Setup

Set TELLA_API_KEY to your Tella account API key (Account → Settings → API). Sent as Authorization: Bearer on every call. No OAuth, no refresh — it's a single static token.

Run tella-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:

  tella-pp-cli playlists 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 --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 — piped/agent consumers get pure JSON on stdout.

Agent Feedback

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

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

Entries are stored locally at ~/.tella-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl. They are never POSTed unless TELLA_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or TELLA_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 agent calls the same command every run with the same configuration - HeyGen's "Beacon" pattern.

tella-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
tella-pp-cli --profile briefing playlists list
tella-pp-cli profile list --json
tella-pp-cli profile show briefing
tella-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 tella-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

Install the MCP binary from this CLI's published public-library entry or pre-built release, then register it:

claude mcp add tella-pp-mcp -- tella-pp-mcp

Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

1. Check if installed: which tella-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:

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

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