pp-mobbin

Mobbin — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the mobbin-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 mobbin --cli-only
   

2. Verify: mobbin-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/productivity/mobbin/cmd/mobbin-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.

Wraps Mobbin's curated library of shipped UI (web + mobile) with a local SQLite mirror, full-res batch downloads from the Bytescale CDN, and time-windowed audits across apps. Built for the Wednesday design crit and the quarterly onboarding audit. Uses your existing Chrome session via auth login --chrome — no extra API key, no paid MCP.

When to Use This CLI

Use this CLI when an agent needs to compose design-research workflows that go beyond "search and show." Reach for it for: batch downloading screens to a folder for downstream tooling; building cross-app pattern decks; running time-windowed audits ("every web SaaS onboarding from the last quarter"); or watching a competitor app for flow drift. It is intentionally web-first but iOS works on every command. The official Mobbin MCP exposes one search tool; this CLI exposes the full Mobbin surface plus six commands no Mobbin tool ships.

Unique Capabilities

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

Design crit workflows

• deck — Build a design-crit deck for a pattern across an industry: searches matching screens, downloads full-res images from the Bytescale CDN, packages a zip with a manifest CSV.

  Replaces the 20-tab screenshot-and-rename loop designers do every crit week with one command and a reproducible artifact.

  mobbin-pp-cli deck "fintech paywalls" --platform web --limit 20 --export-zip ./deck.zip --agent
  

• bench — Cross-app leaderboard for any pattern from the local store: count, last seen, top apps that ship it.

  Answers "who has shipped this pattern lately?" instantly without re-scrolling Mobbin's UI.

  mobbin-pp-cli bench --pattern paywall --industry fintech --platform web --agent
  

• grab — Batch-download matching screens at 1920px from Bytescale with deterministic filenames and a manifest.json side-car for downstream tooling.

  Replaces hand-dragging 20 PNGs into Finder. The manifest.json is what Figma/Storyboard plugins consume.

  mobbin-pp-cli grab --pattern empty-state --platform web --industry fintech --out ./refs --rename '{app}_{pattern}_{idx}.png'
  

• cross — Fan out a pattern query across web AND iOS for one app set; join results on app slug; output a side-by-side parity manifest.

  Web product designers checking whether the iOS reference still matches the desktop pattern. The user's explicit dual-platform ask.

  mobbin-pp-cli cross "paywall" --apps stripe,linear,figma --agent
  

Longitudinal analysis

• audit — Time-windowed flow audit across an industry: app, flow name, step count, captured_at — with --since support for delta-since-last-quarter reports.

  Quarterly onboarding/checkout/empty-state audits stop being a manual diff against last quarter's Notion doc.

  mobbin-pp-cli audit onboarding --platform web --industry b2b-saas --since 60d --agent --select app,flow,step_count,captured_at
  

• drift — Diff an app's flows + screens between local snapshots; surface what changed (added/removed/screen count).

  Tracks competitor product evolution. "What did Stripe ship since last month?" was unanswerable before.

  mobbin-pp-cli drift stripe-web --since 30d --agent
  

Command Reference

apps — Browse and search apps in Mobbin's library (web, iOS, Android).

• mobbin-pp-cli apps discover — Paginated discover-page apps. Tabs are latest / popular / animations.
• mobbin-pp-cli apps list — List every app for a platform. Returns a flat array of {id, appName, platform, ...}.
• mobbin-pp-cli apps popular — Popular apps grouped by category with preview screenshots.
• mobbin-pp-cli apps search — Authenticated app search with category filters.

autocomplete — Cross-entity autocomplete search across apps, screens, and flows.

• mobbin-pp-cli autocomplete — Fast autocomplete across apps, screens, and flows. Returns matching IDs grouped by relevance.

collections — Manage your saved Mobbin collections (decks of screens, flows, or apps). Read endpoints hit mobbin.com/api; write endpoints hit Supabase PostgREST directly (auth-token + apikey).

• mobbin-pp-cli collections add-app — Add an app to a collection.
• mobbin-pp-cli collections add-flow — Add a flow to a collection.
• mobbin-pp-cli collections add-screen — Add a screen to a collection.
• mobbin-pp-cli collections contents — Items inside a collection, paginated. Bucketed by --content-type and --platform-type.
• mobbin-pp-cli collections create — Create a new collection in the authenticated user's workspace.
• mobbin-pp-cli collections delete — Delete a collection. Uses PostgREST filter ?id=eq..
• mobbin-pp-cli collections list — All collections owned by the authenticated user.
• mobbin-pp-cli collections remove-screen — Remove a screen from a collection.

filters — Browse the filter taxonomy — every app category, screen pattern, UI element, and flow action with definitions and content counts.

• mobbin-pp-cli filters — Full filter taxonomy.

flows — Search and browse user-flow recordings (onboarding, checkout, settings).

• mobbin-pp-cli flows — Cross-app flow search. Filter by --flow-actions like 'creating-account' or 'subscribing'. Requires Mobbin Pro session.

screens — Search and inspect individual screens. Filter by pattern, element, OCR keywords, and app category.

• mobbin-pp-cli screens — Cross-app screen search. Use --screen-patterns 'paywall' or --screen-elements 'search-bar' to filter. Requires a Mobbin Pro session (auth login --chrome).

sites — Web sites in Mobbin's library (the web-app equivalent of apps for mobile).

• mobbin-pp-cli sites — Full searchable-sites list for the web experience.

trending — Trending entities updated daily by Mobbin's editorial team.

• mobbin-pp-cli trending apps — Trending apps for a platform — what's hot this week on Mobbin.
• mobbin-pp-cli trending filter-tags — Trending filter tags — patterns, elements, or categories users search for right now.
• mobbin-pp-cli trending keywords — Trending OCR keywords found inside screenshots — what text-in-screenshots users are searching.
• mobbin-pp-cli trending sites — Trending web sites (web-only surface).

workspaces — List your Mobbin workspaces. The default workspace is required to create collections.

• mobbin-pp-cli workspaces — All workspaces the authenticated user belongs to.

Finding the right command

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

mobbin-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

Wednesday paywall deck

mobbin-pp-cli deck "fintech paywalls" --platform web --limit 20 --export-zip ./paywall-deck-$(date +%Y%m%d).zip

Date-stamped zip with full-res PNGs and a manifest CSV — drag straight into Figma for the design crit.

Cross-platform pattern parity

mobbin-pp-cli cross "empty-state" --apps stripe,linear,figma --agent --select app,platform,screen_id

Web + iOS in one fan-out; the join on app slug is what makes parity comparisons cheap.

Quarterly onboarding audit

mobbin-pp-cli audit onboarding --platform web --industry b2b-saas --since 90d --agent --select app,flow,step_count,captured_at

Returns only flows captured in the last 90 days, grouped by app — drop into a CSV diff to show your PM what's changed.

Narrow a verbose screen response

mobbin-pp-cli screens --platform web --screen-patterns paywall --agent --select data.id,data.appName,data.imageUrl,data.screenPatterns

Screen-search payloads ship ~30 fields per row; --select with dotted paths keeps only the four agents actually need, cutting context burn ~85%.

Bench a pattern

mobbin-pp-cli bench --pattern checkout --industry e-commerce --platform web --agent

Local-SQL aggregate: count of screens per app, latest captured_at. Answers "who's shipping checkout flows lately?" without re-scrolling Mobbin.

Auth Setup

Mobbin has no public API key. The CLI imports your logged-in Chrome cookies via pycookiecheat, cookies, or cookie-scoop-cli (one is required). Run mobbin-pp-cli auth login --chrome and the CLI handles the split Supabase JWT cookies (sb-ujasntkfphywizsdaapi-auth-token.0 / .1) and refreshes them automatically. Free-tier sessions work for trending / discover / popular / filters; full content search and per-app HTML scraping need a Mobbin Pro session.

Run mobbin-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:

  mobbin-pp-cli apps list mock-value --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 MOBBIN_HOME=<dir> to relocate all four path kinds under one root.

• Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge: MOBBIN_CONFIG_DIR, MOBBIN_DATA_DIR, MOBBIN_STATE_DIR, MOBBIN_CACHE_DIR.

• Resolution order is per-kind env var, --home, MOBBIN_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 mobbin-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": {
      "mobbin": {
        "command": "mobbin-pp-mcp",
        "env": {
          "MOBBIN_HOME": "/srv/mobbin"
        }
      }
    }
  }
  

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

Agent Feedback

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

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

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

mobbin-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
mobbin-pp-cli --profile briefing apps list mock-value
mobbin-pp-cli profile list --json
mobbin-pp-cli profile show briefing
mobbin-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 mobbin-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/productivity/mobbin/cmd/mobbin-pp-mcp@latest
   

2. Register with Claude Code:

   claude mcp add mobbin-pp-mcp -- mobbin-pp-mcp
   

3. Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

1. Check if installed: which mobbin-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:

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

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