pp-company-goat

SKILL.md

Company GOAT — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the company-goat-pp-cli binary. You must verify the CLI is installed before invoking any command from this skill. If it is missing, install it first:

Install via the Printing Press installer:
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install company-goat --cli-only

Verify: company-goat-pp-cli --version

Ensure $GOPATH/bin (or $HOME/go/bin) is on $PATH.

If the npx install fails (no Node, offline, etc.), fall back to a direct Go install (requires Go 1.26.3 or newer):
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/company-goat/cmd/company-goat-pp-cli@latest

If --version reports "command not found" after install, the install step did not put the binary on $PATH. Do not proceed with skill commands until verification succeeds.

When to Use This CLI

Use Company GOAT when an agent or human needs structured company-research data on a small or midsize startup — fundraising, engineering signal, mention timeline, legal entity, domain age — without paying for Crunchbase Pro. Best for one-company-at-a-time deep research. Not for bulk discovery (sources don't scale to thousands of queries) and not for global private-market funding-graph queries (no source has that for free).

The killer feature: SEC Form D, free

Most US startups raising priced equity rounds (Series Seed → Series C, Reg D 506(b)/506(c)) file Form D with the SEC within 15 days of first sale. The filing names the issuer, the offering amount, the exemption claimed, and the related persons (officers, directors, promoters). Crunchbase Pro charges $999/year for a wrapper around this same source; this CLI extracts it directly from EDGAR for free. Reach for funding when an agent needs to verify a US startup's actual fundraising history rather than quote Crunchbase Free's empty "undisclosed" rows.

Coverage at a glance

SEC Form D / funding / funding-trend — US-only. Reg D priced rounds. Pre-Series-A SAFEs are not covered. Empty filings + a coverage_note is the expected response for non-US companies, pre-priced-round companies, and companies that just haven't filed yet. When Form D is empty, funding falls back to a broader EDGAR full-text search and surfaces mentions binned by signal class: subsidiary (10-K parent mentions), debt (Venture Lending and Leasing portfolio mentions), acquisition (8-K parent disclosures), and other. funding --who also searches across all form types, not just Form D. Disambiguation: EDGAR's full-text search matches by name fragment, so "Notion" hits both Notion Labs and Notion Capital VC. The result includes cik_summaries and is_ambiguous: true whenever multiple distinct CIKs match. Re-call with --cik <id> (CIK from the summary) to filter to the correct entity. The compound commands (snapshot, compare, signal) propagate the ambiguity flag through their output and refuse to synthesize a side-by-side number when ambiguous — the agent decides which CIK is correct using broader context (Wikidata founders, GitHub org alignment, the user's intent) and re-runs funding --cik to confirm. signal surfaces Form D match is ambiguous as its own signal class so cross-source consistency checks aren't trusted blindly.

Companies House / legal --region uk — UK Ltd / PLC only. Requires COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY (free at developer.companieshouse.gov.uk).

GitHub / engineering — Any public org. Optional GITHUB_TOKEN raises rate limits from 60/hr to 5000/hr.

Hacker News / mentions / launches — Algolia full-text search across HN since 2007. No auth. mentions returns both a year-month histogram AND the top-N stories sorted by points (use --top N to widen, default 5). launches is the Show-HN-only flavor — use it for "did this company ever post a Show HN" questions; use mentions for "what do people say about this company on HN."

YC directory / yc — YC-backed companies only.

Wikidata / wiki — Sparse on early-stage; mostly useful for established companies.

RDAP / DNS / domain — Any registered domain.

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.

Multi-source orchestration

snapshot — Look up a company across SEC Form D, GitHub, Hacker News, Companies House, YC, Wikidata, and DNS in one command — rendered as a unified terminal summary in seconds.

When you need to evaluate a startup quickly, this is the one command that tells you whether they raised, are shipping code, are talked about, and are legitimate — without 8 browser tabs.

company-goat-pp-cli snapshot --domain stripe.com --json

signal — Surface suspicious cross-source patterns. Example: 'Form D says raised $5M in 2024 but GitHub org has 0 commits since 2022' or 'YC entry says Active but website domain expired'.

When deciding whether to engage with a startup, this command flags zombie companies and stale fundraising stories without you having to open every tab.

company-goat-pp-cli signal --domain acme-corp.com --json

Killer feature

funding — See structured SEC Form D filings for a US private company — offering amount, filing date, exemption claimed (Reg D 506(b) vs 506(c)), related entities, and state of incorporation.

When an agent needs to verify a US startup's actual fundraising history, this is the single most reliable free signal. Avoid agents quoting Crunchbase Free's empty 'undisclosed' rows.

company-goat-pp-cli funding --domain stripe.com --json

funding-trend — Time series of Form D filings for a company across years — shows fundraising cadence and gaps. Useful for spotting 'they haven't raised since 2022' silently.

Use this when an agent needs to summarize a company's fundraising arc, not just the latest round.

company-goat-pp-cli funding-trend --domain stripe.com --since 2018 --json

funding --who — Show every Form D filing that names a given person (officer, large holder). Reveals serial founders, repeat advisors, prolific investors.

Use when an agent needs to map who's behind a constellation of startups, or verify a founder's actual filing history.

company-goat-pp-cli funding --who 'Patrick Collison' --json

Local state that compounds

search — Search the YC directory by free text + --batch and --industry filters. Free-text matches against name, one-liner description, industry, and location.

An agent tasked with 'find a YC fintech with "agent" in the description' has a one-shot query rather than scrolling the YC directory.

company-goat-pp-cli search 'agent' --industry fintech

compare — Two snapshots aligned column-by-column for direct comparison. Free in this CLI; paid feature elsewhere.

When evaluating two competing startups, this is the one-shot comparison that doesn't require flipping between tabs.

company-goat-pp-cli compare stripe.com adyen.com --json

Command Reference

filings — SEC EDGAR Form D filings — the primary data source for US private fundraising disclosure

company-goat-pp-cli filings — Fetch all SEC submissions for a given CIK (Central Index Key). Used as the seed call when resolving a company's...

Hand-written commands

company-goat-pp-cli resolve <name-or-domain> — Resolve a company name to a canonical domain. Returns numbered candidates if ambiguous; --pick N or --domain to...

company-goat-pp-cli funding <co> — SEC EDGAR Form D filings + YC batch lookup. Shows offering amount, filing date, exemption claimed, related entities...

company-goat-pp-cli engineering <co> — GitHub org metadata: repo count, contributor count, commit cadence, top languages.

company-goat-pp-cli launches <co> — Show HN posts about this company, sorted by points. Includes launch year for spotting dead vs. active launches.

company-goat-pp-cli mentions <co> — Hacker News mention timeline: monthly histogram of mentions over time via Algolia full-text search.

company-goat-pp-cli legal <co> — Legal entity lookup. UK via Companies House (optional COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY); US via SEC EDGAR Form D issuer...

company-goat-pp-cli yc <co> — Y Combinator directory entry if the company was YC-backed: batch, status, location, description.

company-goat-pp-cli wiki <co> — Wikidata company facts: founded date, founders, HQ, industry, key people. Sparse on early-stage startups.

company-goat-pp-cli domain <co> — Domain age via RDAP/WHOIS, DNS records, and CNAME-based hosting hint (Vercel/Netlify/Heroku/Cloudflare Pages/AWS/GCP).

company-goat-pp-cli snapshot <co> — Fan out across all 7 sources in parallel and render a unified summary. The headline command. Uses cliutil.FanoutRun...

company-goat-pp-cli compare <a> <b> — Two snapshots side-by-side, aligned by section. For evaluating which of two startups looks healthier.

company-goat-pp-cli search <query> — Search the YC directory by free text + --batch and --industry filters. Cross-source FTS5 over the synced store is on the v1 roadmap; today this is YC-only.

company-goat-pp-cli signal <co> — Cross-source consistency check. Flags suspicious patterns like 'raised in 2024 but no GitHub commits since 2022'....

company-goat-pp-cli funding-trend <co> — Time series of Form D filings over time. Useful for charting a startup's fundraising cadence.

company-goat-pp-cli sync — Pull syncable resources (YC directory and any other configured) into local SQLite. Use --resources to pick a subset. Subsequent reads with --data-source local query offline.

Finding the right command

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

company-goat-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

Quick due diligence on a US startup

company-goat-pp-cli snapshot --domain anthropic.com --json

Fan out across all 7 sources and render a unified summary. Use --domain to skip name resolution and go straight to the canonical entity. Each source returns {status, data, note, elapsed} so partial failures are visible.

Find every SEC filing for a founder

company-goat-pp-cli funding --who 'Patrick Collison' --json

Returns every Form D filing where this person is named — useful for mapping serial founders and repeat investors.

Compare two competing startups

company-goat-pp-cli compare ramp.com brex.com

Aligns snapshots side-by-side; agent-readable. Use for tradeoff analysis.

Build a research database

company-goat-pp-cli sync && company-goat-pp-cli search 'fintech'

Pulls the YC directory and any other syncable resources into local SQLite, then full-text searches the synced index. Subsequent reads can use --data-source local to query offline.

Surface suspicious patterns

company-goat-pp-cli signal --domain acme-corp.com --json

Cross-source consistency check — flags cases like 'raised $X in 2024 but GitHub silent since 2022' that no single source would catch.

Auth Setup

No required keys. Three optional environment variables expand coverage and rate limits:

COMPANY_PP_CONTACT_EMAIL=you@example.com — Sent in the SEC EDGAR User-Agent header to comply with EDGAR's fair-access policy. Recommended for any non-trivial use of funding / funding-trend / snapshot.

GITHUB_TOKEN — Raises GitHub API rate limit from 60/hr to 5000/hr. gh auth token works. Used by engineering, snapshot.

COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY — Required for legal --region uk. Register free at developer.companieshouse.gov.uk and create a REST application.

SEC EDGAR requests are paced and retried automatically. The CLI honors Retry-After, backs off on 429/5xx responses, and exits with code 7 if SEC continues throttling after retries.

Run company-goat-pp-cli doctor to verify which of these are detected.

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:

company-goat-pp-cli filings --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:

{
  "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 — piped/agent consumers get pure JSON on stdout.

Agent Feedback

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

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

Entries are stored locally at ~/.company-goat-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl. They are never POSTed unless COMPANY_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or COMPANY_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:

Sink
Effect

stdout
Default; write to stdout only

file:<path>
Atomically write output to <path> (tmp + rename)

webhook:<url>
POST the output body to the URL (application/json or application/x-ndjson when --compact)

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 agent calls the same command every run with the same configuration - HeyGen's "Beacon" pattern.

company-goat-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
company-goat-pp-cli --profile briefing filings
company-goat-pp-cli profile list --json
company-goat-pp-cli profile show briefing
company-goat-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

Code
Meaning

0
Success

2
Usage error (wrong arguments)

3
Resource not found

5
API error (upstream issue)

7
Rate limited (wait and retry)

10
Config error

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

Empty, help, or --help → show company-goat-pp-cli --help output

Starts with install → ends with mcp → MCP installation; otherwise → see Prerequisites above

Anything else → Direct Use (execute as CLI command with --agent)

MCP Server Installation

Install the MCP server:
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/company-goat/cmd/company-goat-pp-mcp@latest

Register with Claude Code:
claude mcp add company-goat-pp-mcp -- company-goat-pp-mcp

Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

Check if installed: which company-goat-pp-cli
If not found, offer to install (see Prerequisites at the top of this skill).

Match the user query to the best command from the Unique Capabilities and Command Reference above.

Execute with the --agent flag:
company-goat-pp-cli <command> [subcommand] [args] --agent

If ambiguous, drill into subcommand help: company-goat-pp-cli <command> --help.