pp-alaska-airlines

What this skill does

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# Alaska Airlines — Printing Press CLI

## Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the `alaska-airlines-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 `$HOME/.local/bin` on macOS/Linux and `%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\PrintingPress\bin` on Windows:
   ```bash
   npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install alaska-airlines --cli-only
   ```
2. Verify: `alaska-airlines-pp-cli --version`
3. Ensure the reported install directory is on `$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 1.26.3 or newer):

```bash
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/travel/alaska-airlines/cmd/alaska-airlines-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

Pick this CLI when an agent needs to search Alaska flights or check Atmos Rewards data programmatically with cached airport lookup and trimmed JSON output. Don't pick it for booking automation; the final pay POST is not replayable from a static binary and is not attempted.

## Known Gaps

These capabilities were scoped in the manuscript for this CLI but were not implemented in this generation. They are not currently available; planning around them will fail with "unknown command" or "unknown flag" errors. Use the listed real command instead where applicable:

- `book prepare` (pre-checkout deeplink builder) - not implemented
- `flights search --want-seats-together` (family-of-N seat finder) - not implemented
- `flights award-watch` (award fare-drop watcher) - not implemented; track manually by re-running `flights award-cheapest` on a schedule
- `atmos status` (tier progress) - not implemented; use `atmos-rewards balance` for raw points
- `flights search multi` (multi-leg composer) - not implemented; run separate `flights search` invocations per leg
- `doctor --auth` (dedicated JWT decode flag) - not implemented; `doctor` performs the general auth check

## Unique Capabilities

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

### Agent-native plumbing
- **`flights search --select`** — Generic --select flag narrows the ~50KB search/results JSON to just the fields the agent needs.

  _Lets the agent ask for exactly what it needs and skip the chrome._

  ```bash
  alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights search --origin SFO --destination SEA --depart 2026-11-27 --json --select flights.flightNumber,flights.fares.saver.price,flights.duration
  ```

### Award (miles+cash) planner
- **`flights award-cheapest --destination-region japan --month 2026-08`** — Fan out across every (depart, return) pair in a calendar month across multiple destination airports in parallel; return the cheapest round-trip in miles.

  _Solves "find me a flight to Japan using points lowest price in August" in one command instead of clicking the Alaska site N times._

  ```bash
  alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights award-cheapest --origin SFO --destination-region japan --month 2026-08 --cabin economy --max-stops 1 --json
  ```

  Built on the same `/search/results/__data.json` endpoint the cash search uses; the `--award` flag (or `flights award-search`) toggles `ShoppingMethod=onlineaward`.

### Cash vs. points value comparator with TPG valuation
- **`flights value-compare --origin FCO --destination SEA --depart 2026-08-30`** — Runs paired cash + award searches for the same itinerary and applies a cents-per-point baseline (default: Alaska/Atmos from The Points Guy's monthly valuations page, scraped on first use and cached locally for 30 days). Returns effective cpp, TPG multiple, and TPG-valued dollar cost of paying with points.

  _Answers "is this redemption actually a good deal?" in one read instead of running two searches and a calculator._

  ```bash
  alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights value-compare --origin FCO --destination SEA --depart 2026-08-30 --cabin economy --max-stops 0 --json
  ```

  Use `--cpp 1.2` to override the baseline (e.g. NerdWallet's number) or `--no-valuation-cache` to force a fresh TPG scrape. Soft-fallback chain: override → fresh cache → live TPG → stale cache → constant. Never hard-fails on a valuation lookup issue; surfaces the source in `meta.cpp_baseline_source` (`tpg-live`, `tpg-cached`, `override`, `fallback-stale`, `fallback-constant`).

## HTTP Transport

This CLI uses Chrome-compatible HTTP transport for browser-facing endpoints. It does not require a resident browser process for normal API calls.

## Command Reference

**account** — Login status, session tokens

- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli account login-status` — Check if current cookie session is authenticated
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli account token` — Refresh primary session JWT

**airports** — Airport lookup, codeshare partner info, and full catalog

- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli airports get` — Get airport details by IATA code, including codeshare carrier coverage
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli airports list` — Full Alaska Airlines + codeshare airport list (IATA + city + region + lat/lon)

**atmos-rewards** — Atmos Rewards loyalty program account data

- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli atmos-rewards balance` — Current Atmos Rewards points balance
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli atmos-rewards token-refresh` — Refresh Atmos Rewards token via cookie session

**cart** — Cart state for a constructed itinerary deeplink (read-only inspection)

- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli cart` — Inspect cart state for a constructed itinerary deeplink (requires `--leg1` and `--adults` flags)

**flights** — Search Alaska Airlines flights with pricing, fare classes, and flexible-date matrices

- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights business` — Alaska for Business program metadata
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights et-info` — Electronic ticket info / general metadata
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights get-features` — Feature flags scoped to a user (used internally by site)
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights search` — Search flights between two airports for given dates and passenger mix. Pass `--award` to switch from cash to miles+cash fares (same endpoint, `ShoppingMethod=onlineaward`).
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights shoulder-dates` — Flexible-date pricing matrix - get fares for dates near your target
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights award-search` — Single-date award fare matrix (miles + cash). Thin alias over `flights search --award`.
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights award-cheapest` — Lowest-miles-in-a-month planner. Fans out across destinations and (depart, return) pairs in parallel; returns the cheapest round-trip in miles.
- `alaska-airlines-pp-cli flights value-compare` — Cash vs. points comparator with TPG cents-per-point valuation. Runs paired searches for the same itinerary and emits effective cpp, TPG multiple, and TPG-valued dollar cost of paying with points. Pass `--cpp <float>` to override the baseline.


### Finding the right command

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

```bash
alaska-airlines-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


### Trim a flights sea