Printing Press Reprint

/printing-press-reprint

Regenerate an existing printed CLI under the current machine. The user gives a CLI name and (optionally) reasons for the reprint. This skill ensures the prior CLI is locally present, recommends whether to reuse or redo prior research, and hands off to /printing-press with the context the novel-features subagent needs to reconcile prior features against the current machine — keep, reframe, or drop with reasons, never silent.

/printing-press-reprint notion
/printing-press-reprint cal.com  the new MCP intent surface landed and the prior CLI ships endpoint-mirror only
/printing-press-reprint allrecipes

When to run

• A significant Printing Press upgrade (new MCP surface, new auth modes, new transport, scoring rubric changes) would lift this CLI more than manual polish.
• The published CLI ships with a known systemic gap a reprint would fix.
• The user wants prior novel features re-evaluated against the current machine and current personas, not carried forward verbatim.

For one-off code-quality fixes, prefer /printing-press-polish — it doesn't redo research or rebuild the manuscript.

Setup

PRESS_HOME="$HOME/printing-press"
PRESS_LIBRARY="$PRESS_HOME/library"
PRESS_MANUSCRIPTS="$PRESS_HOME/manuscripts"

Phase A — Resolve and reconcile presence

Resolve the user's argument the same way /printing-press-import does: fetch the public library registry.json once, then exact → normalized → fuzzy match. The argument can be an API slug (notion), a brand name (cal.com), an old <api>-pp-cli form, or close enough.

Then check what exists locally and reconcile against the public library by reading both provenance manifests' run_id and generated_at:

When invoking /printing-press-import, let it own backup, overwrite, build-verify, and module-path-rewrite. Wait for it to return clean before continuing.

Phase B — Verify prior research is reconcilable

Confirm the two paths the novel-features subagent checks for prior research are populated:

LIB_TARGET="$PRESS_LIBRARY/$API_SLUG"
LIB_RESEARCH="$LIB_TARGET/research.json"
MAN_RESEARCH=$(ls -1t "$PRESS_MANUSCRIPTS/$API_SLUG"/*/research.json 2>/dev/null | head -1)

If neither exists, the published CLI predates research.json provenance. The subagent will treat the run as a first print and Pass 2(d) reprint reconciliation will not fire — there is nothing for it to read. Surface this and ask:

Published <api> was built before research.json provenance landed. Without it, the novel-features subagent will treat this as a first print — there is nothing to reconcile against. Continue as a degraded reprint (essentially a fresh print with a kept binary name)?

If the user declines, exit. If they continue, record the absence so the hand-off prompt notes that this is a degraded reprint.

Phase C — Recency recommendation

Pull researched_at from the most-recent prior research.json and printing_press_version + generated_at from .printing-press.json:

RESEARCHED_AT=$(jq -r '.researched_at // empty' "$MAN_RESEARCH" 2>/dev/null)
PRESS_VERSION=$(jq -r '.printing_press_version // empty' "$LIB_TARGET/.printing-press.json" 2>/dev/null)
GENERATED_AT=$(jq -r '.generated_at // empty' "$LIB_TARGET/.printing-press.json" 2>/dev/null)

Compute the calendar age of the research with python3 so it stays portable across macOS/Linux and tolerates the microsecond precision that generated_at carries (BSD date -f rejects fractional seconds; python3 is on every supported platform):

AGE_DAYS=$(python3 -c "
from datetime import datetime, timezone
ts = '$RESEARCHED_AT'.replace('Z', '+00:00')
print(int((datetime.now(timezone.utc) - datetime.fromisoformat(ts)).total_seconds() // 86400))
" 2>/dev/null)

Surface both signals to the user — research age and prior machine version. Age thresholds are rules of thumb, not gates:

• under 30 days → reuse looks safe
• 30–120 days → reuse plausible; the user should mention any known API churn in their reprint reason so the subagent's Pass 2 picks it up
• over 120 days → redo recommended

Don't predict API churn from age alone — describe the signals and let the user override. The Phase 0 binary-version-bump revalidation in /printing-press handles the machine-delta side independently; don't duplicate it here.

Ask via AskUserQuestion:

1. Reuse prior research — keep the prior brief; the subagent re-scores prior novel features against current personas
2. Redo research — re-run Phase 1 from scratch; the subagent still ingests prior novel features as Pass 2(d) input
3. Show me first — display the prior brief's headline + novel-features list, then re-ask between options 1 and 2

Phase D — Hand off to /printing-press

Invoke /printing-press <api> and bundle three things into the prompt:

1. A header line stating the user already chose to regenerate, so Phase 0's library-check should select "Generate a fresh CLI" and not re-prompt fresh-vs-improve.
2. Research mode from Phase C (reuse or redo). Phase 0's existing reuse logic consumes this.
3. The user's freeform reprint reason, verbatim, in a User context block. This propagates into the brief as ## User Vision and becomes Pass 2(e) input to the novel-features subagent — the right hook for "I want better MCP support" → bias the brainstorm accordingly.

Do not pass a separate "this is a reprint" marker. The novel-features subagent runs unconditionally on every print and discovers prior research via its own discovery snippet (see skills/printing-press/references/novel-features-subagent.md). The paths import populated in Phase A are exactly the paths it checks; Pass 2(d) fires whenever prior research.json exists.

After hand-off

The printing-press flow drives the rest. Don't summarize its work — let the user see the live phases.

If /printing-press halts with the subagent's pre-flight HALT (brief lacks concrete Users / Top Workflows content), the reused prior brief predates the subagent's required schema. Recommend re-running with Redo research selected at Phase C.