archive.today — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the archive-is-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 archive-is --cli-only
   

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2. Verify: archive-is-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/archive-is/cmd/archive-is-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 this whenever a user wants to archive a URL, read a paywalled article, check whether something was previously archived, or batch-capture a list of URLs for research. Specifically good when:

• A user sends a paywalled link and asks "can you read this" → read fetches text via archive
• They want to preserve a URL that might change → save forces a fresh capture
• They want historical versions → history lists all known snapshots
• They have 20+ URLs to archive → bulk runs rate-limited batch archival

Don't reach for this if the URL is trivially scrapeable without archive services (no paywall, robots-allowed, direct HTTP works), or if the user wants the original source rather than a cached version.

Unique Capabilities

The whole CLI is unique — archive.today has no official API. But within this CLI, certain commands are the differentiators.

The hero commands

• read <url> — Find or create an archive for a URL. Looks up existing snapshots first (Memento timegate → CDX fallback); submits a fresh capture only if nothing exists. The "always do the right thing" command.

  This is how 90% of agent calls should start. It's idempotent — calling it twice on the same URL doesn't double-submit.

• get <url> [--raw] / tldr <url> — Fetch article text, optionally LLM-summarized. Automatic Wayback fallback when archive.today serves a CAPTCHA (which happens daily to cloud IPs).

  tldr pipes the fetched text through a summarization step — useful for agent chains where you want a short take without shipping 20KB of HTML back.

Durability operations

• save <url> — Force a fresh capture via /submit/?url=<x>&anyway=1. Use when read returns an existing snapshot that's too old or missing a paywall update.

• history <url> — List all known snapshots via Memento timemap parsing. Shows every capture date across both archive.today and Wayback.

• bulk [file] — Rate-limited batch archiving from a file or stdin. Reads URLs one per line, submits each with backoff, returns a report of successes / failures / pre-existing.

  grep -oE 'https?://[^ )]+' notes.md | archive-is-pp-cli bulk - archives every URL in a markdown file.

• request <url> — Fire-and-forget submit with optional wait+poll. Useful for long captures where you want to come back later.

Observability

• snapshots newest <url> — Just the newest snapshot URL for a target, useful in scripts.

• captures — List your local capture index (post-sync).

• feeds — archive.today's global recent-archives feed.

• --backend archive-is,wayback — Every read/get accepts a backend preference. Defaults to archive-is with Wayback fallback; flip the order for Wayback-primary.

Command Reference

Archive + retrieve:

• archive-is-pp-cli read <url> — Find or create (hero command)
• archive-is-pp-cli get <url> — Fetch article text (with Wayback fallback)
• archive-is-pp-cli tldr <url> — Fetch + summarize
• archive-is-pp-cli save <url> — Force fresh capture
• archive-is-pp-cli request <url> — Fire-and-forget submit
• archive-is-pp-cli request check <url> — Check whether a submitted request has completed

Listing + history:

• archive-is-pp-cli history <url> — All known snapshots
• archive-is-pp-cli snapshots <url> — Best known snapshot for a URL
• archive-is-pp-cli snapshots newest <url> — Newest snapshot URL
• archive-is-pp-cli snapshots timemap <url> — Raw Memento timemap
• archive-is-pp-cli captures — Local capture index
• archive-is-pp-cli feeds — Global recent feed

Batch:

• archive-is-pp-cli bulk [file] — Batch from file or stdin

Local store:

• archive-is-pp-cli sync / export / import / workflow archive — Local SQLite ops

Auth + health:

• archive-is-pp-cli auth — Config (no API key needed; auth is a no-op)
• archive-is-pp-cli doctor — Verify backend reachability

Recipes

Read a paywalled article

archive-is-pp-cli read "https://www.wsj.com/articles/..." --agent
# or: return just the text
archive-is-pp-cli get "https://www.wsj.com/articles/..." --agent

read returns the archive URL (finding existing or creating new). get returns extracted article text by default, falling back to Wayback if archive.today CAPTCHAs; add --raw only when you need the archived HTML.

Preserve a URL before it changes

archive-is-pp-cli save "https://example.com/important-page" --agent
archive-is-pp-cli history "https://example.com/important-page" --agent  # verify

Force capture, then check history to confirm the new snapshot registered.

Bulk archive a research batch

grep -oE 'https?://[^ )]+' research-notes.md | archive-is-pp-cli bulk - --agent
# or from a file:
archive-is-pp-cli bulk urls.txt --agent

Reads URLs one per line, submits each with exponential backoff, returns per-URL status (archived, pre-existing, failed) as JSON.

Wayback-preferred for a reliable-read

archive-is-pp-cli read "https://ft.com/content/xyz" --backend wayback,archive-is --agent

Use when the Wayback Machine snapshot is known to be cleaner or archive.today is rate-limiting.

Auth Setup

No API key required. Archive.today and Wayback Machine are both public. The auth subcommand exists for consistency but is a no-op — doctor reports "Auth: not required" which is the expected state.

Optional env:

• ARCHIVE_IS_BASE_URL — override archive.today host (for mirrors)
• WAYBACK_BASE_URL — override Wayback Machine host

Agent Mode

Add --agent to any command. Expands to --json --compact --no-input --no-color --yes --no-prompt. Every action command also prints structured next_actions hints on stderr when called non-interactively — the calling agent sees "tried X, got Y, consider Z" automatically.

Notable flags:

• --submit-timeout <duration> — max wait for a fresh submit (default 10m; 0 = unbounded)
• --backend archive-is,wayback — backend preference and fallback order
• --raw — return raw HTML from get instead of extracted text

Filtering output

--select accepts dotted paths to descend into nested responses; arrays traverse element-wise:

archive-is-pp-cli <command> --agent --select id,name
archive-is-pp-cli <command> --agent --select items.id,items.owner.name

Use this to narrow huge payloads to the fields you actually need — critical for deeply nested API responses.

Response envelope

Data-layer commands wrap output in {"meta": {...}, "results": <data>}. Parse .results for data and .meta.source to know whether it's live or local. The N results (live) summary is printed to stderr only when stdout is a TTY; piped/agent consumers see pure JSON on stdout.

Exit Codes

Installation

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/archive-is/cmd/archive-is-pp-cli@latest
archive-is-pp-cli doctor

MCP Server

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/media-and-entertainment/archive-is/cmd/archive-is-pp-mcp@latest
claude mcp add archive-is-pp-mcp -- archive-is-pp-mcp

Argument Parsing

Given $ARGUMENTS:

1. Empty, help, or --help → run archive-is-pp-cli --help
2. install → CLI; install mcp → MCP
3. Anything that looks like a URL, or "archive <url>" / "bypass paywall on <url>" → read <url> --agent is the default — it's idempotent and covers the 90% case.
4. "bulk archive" / "archive these" → bulk from stdin if URLs are pasted, else ask for the file path.

Agent Workflow Features

This CLI exposes three shared agent-workflow capabilities patched in from cli-printing-press PR #218.

Named profiles

Persist a set of flags under a name and reuse them across invocations.

# Save the current non-default flags as a named profile
archive-is-pp-cli profile save <name>

# Use a profile — overlays its values onto any flag you don't set explicitly
archive-is-pp-cli --profile <name> <command>

# List / inspect / remove
archive-is-pp-cli profile list
archive-is-pp-cli profile show <name>
archive-is-pp-cli profile delete <name> --yes

Flag precedence: explicit flag > env var > profile > default.

--deliver

Route command output to a sink other than stdout. Useful when an agent needs to hand a result to a file, a webhook, or another process without plumbing.

archive-is-pp-cli <command> --deliver file:/path/to/out.json
archive-is-pp-cli <command> --deliver webhook:https://hooks.example/in

File sinks write atomically (tmp + rename). Webhook sinks POST application/json (or application/x-ndjson when --compact is set). Unknown schemes produce a structured refusal listing the supported set.

feedback

Record in-band feedback about this CLI from the agent side of the loop. Local-only by default; safe to call without configuration.

archive-is-pp-cli feedback "what surprised you or tripped you up"
archive-is-pp-cli feedback list         # show local entries
archive-is-pp-cli feedback clear --yes  # wipe

Entries append to ~/.archive-is-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl as JSON lines. When ARCHIVE_IS_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set and either --send is passed or ARCHIVE_IS_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND=true, the entry is also POSTed upstream (non-blocking — local write always succeeds).