pp-hotel-tonight

What this skill does

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# HotelTonight — Printing Press CLI

## Prerequisites: Install the CLI

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

Use this CLI when an agent or script needs last-minute hotel deal data from HotelTonight that persists and compounds: monitoring a city for price drops, building a price history for a hotel, judging whether a quoted rate is actually cheap, or comparing neighborhoods and dates. It is read-only and anonymous — it never books and never needs a login.

## When Not to Use This CLI

Do not activate this CLI for requests that require creating, updating, deleting, publishing, commenting, upvoting, inviting, ordering, sending messages, booking, purchasing, or changing remote state. This printed CLI exposes read-only commands for inspection, export, sync, and analysis.

## Unique Capabilities

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

### Local price intelligence

- **`watch`** — Snapshot a location's deals now and get told which rooms dropped below your threshold or fell since you last looked.

  _Reach for this when an agent needs to monitor a city for last-minute hotel price drops over time instead of re-querying blind._

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli watch --lat 37.7749 --lng -122.4194 --when tonight --below 150 --agent
  ```
- **`history`** — Show the recorded price and % off history for one hotel from the local store.

  _Use when you need the actual price trajectory of a hotel rather than a single ephemeral quote._

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli history "Argonaut Hotel" --days 30 --agent
  ```
- **`verdict`** — Classify a hotel's current quoted price against its own observed low/median/high as cheap, typical, or expensive.

  _Reach for this to answer 'is this actually cheap?' with a grounded baseline instead of a guess._

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli verdict "Argonaut Hotel" --agent
  ```

### Live deal views

- **`compare-neighborhoods`** — Group tonight's deals in a metro by neighborhood and rank the neighborhoods by median price or best % off.

  _Use when deciding which area of a city has the best last-minute value tonight._

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli compare-neighborhoods --metro 1 --when tonight --agent
  ```
- **`datescan`** — Compare a location's deals across tonight, tomorrow, and the weekend in one ranked side-by-side view.

  _Reach for this to find the cheapest night to stay in an area without running the search repeatedly._

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli datescan --lat 30.3071 --lng -97.7354 --agent
  ```
- **`daily-drop`** — Reveal today's Daily Drop hotel and its real discounted price for a market (the app hides it behind a slide-to-unlock gate), and with --history read the recorded run of past Daily Drops.

  _Use to see and track HotelTonight's exclusive once-a-day flash deal, which the app hides until you unlock it and erases each day._

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli daily-drop --metro 1 --agent
  ```

## Command Reference

**inventory** — Last-minute hotel deal inventory by location

- `hotel-tonight-pp-cli inventory` — Search last-minute hotel deals near a latitude/longitude for a date range

**markets** — HotelTonight markets (cities where deals are offered)

- `hotel-tonight-pp-cli markets get` — Get a single market by its numeric id
- `hotel-tonight-pp-cli markets list` — List HotelTonight's major markets with location, slug, and category prices
- `hotel-tonight-pp-cli markets nearby` — List popular/nearby markets for a given market id


### Finding the right command

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

```bash
hotel-tonight-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


### Tonight's cheapest near a coordinate, trimmed for agents

```bash
hotel-tonight-pp-cli inventory --latitude 37.7749 --longitude -122.4194 --agent --select rooms.hotel.name,rooms.hotel.neighborhood,rooms.customer_price_per_night,rooms.strikethrough_price,rooms.deal_type
```

The raw inventory payload is tens of KB of nested deal data; --select with dotted paths returns just the hotel, neighborhood, price, 30-day-high, and deal type so an agent doesn't burn context.

### Watch a neighborhood for a price target

```bash
hotel-tonight-pp-cli watch --lat 37.7749 --lng -122.4194 --when tonight --below 150
```

Snapshots current deals and reports rooms now under $150 or cheaper than the last observation — run it on a cron to catch drops while you're away.

### Decide which night to stay

```bash
hotel-tonight-pp-cli datescan --lat 30.3071 --lng -97.7354
```

Lines up tonight vs tomorrow vs the weekend for the same area so you can pick the cheapest night in one view.

### Is this rate actually good?

```bash
hotel-tonight-pp-cli verdict "Argonaut Hotel"
```

Classifies the current quote against the hotel's own recorded low/median/high — requires a few prior syncs to build the baseline.

## Auth Setup

No authentication required.

Run `hotel-tonight-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:

  ```bash
  hotel-tonight-pp-cli inventory --latitude example-value --longitude example-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
- **Read-only** — do not use this CLI for create, update, delete, publish, comment, upvote, invite, order, send, or other mutating requests

### Response envelope

Commands that read from the local store or the API wrap output in a provenance envelope:

```json
{
  "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 s