curviate

# Curviate: start here Curviate is a LinkedIn API for agents. The `curviate` CLI is its command surface, and this skill is the dispatcher: it says which skill to read, and carries the few rules that apply everywhere. It carries no command syntax: every command, flag and worked example lives in the area skill that owns it. Established against CLI `0.33.0`. ## Which skill answers this | Task | Skill | |---|---| | First run on a new machine: install, authenticate, connect an account, prove it works. | `curviate-quickstart` | | A member profile or a company page. Resolving a human search term into the filter id a search needs. Sessions, stored profiles and connected accounts. | `curviate-profile` | | Finding people, companies, posts, jobs, services or groups. Running a pasted LinkedIn search URL. | `curviate-search` | | Reading conversations, sending and managing messages, InMail, company-page inboxes. | `curviate-inbox` | | Publishing posts, commenting, reacting, the home feed, notifications. | `curviate-engage` | | Connection invitations, follows, relations, followers. | `curviate-network` | | Job postings: creating, publishing, budgets, applicants. | `curviate-jobs` | | Sales Navigator and Recruiter. | `curviate-premium` | When a task spans two areas (find someone, then message them), read both. They are self-sufficient and repeat what they need to; nothing is hidden behind a third skill. ## Resolve the binary before anything else ```bash curviate --version # needs Node 18 or newer ``` If that fails, install it: `npm install -g @curviate/cli`. **Do not substitute a raw HTTP call for a command you could not find.** The command surface is the contract, and hand-rolled requests miss the projections, the retry contract and the exit-code mapping that every one of these skills is written against. Credentials resolve **flag > environment > stored profile**. For a scripted run prefer `CURVIATE_API_KEY` in the environment or a stored profile: a key passed as a flag is visible to other processes through `ps` and is saved in shell history. ## Branch on the exit code, never on the message text Every command exits with a code that says what to do next, and under `--json` an error prints `{"error": {"code", "message", …}}`. **The code is the contract. The wording is not**: it is written for a human reading a terminal and it changes between releases. Two consequences worth internalising before the first failure: - **A single exit code can carry several distinct causes**, so read `error.code` before deciding on a remedy. Exit `5` alone means three unrelated things whose fixes have nothing in common. - **Retrying is right for some codes and actively wrong for others.** A rate limit tells you how long to wait; a refusal by one of your own ceilings will not clear on a retry at all. Each area skill ends with the exit codes reachable from its commands and the action each implies. Read that table rather than guessing from the message. ## Retrieval mode, and the flag of the same name that is not it Some reads can be answered from a stored copy instead of a live call to LinkedIn, and `--mode` / `--max-age` choose between them. Two rules matter everywhere: - **Exactly four commands accept those flags**: `profile me`, `profile <id>`, `inbox get` and `inbox messages`. The mechanics (what each mode does, what a store miss returns, and why `cache_only` and `--max-age` cannot be combined) are in `curviate-profile` and `curviate-inbox`. - **Every other command refuses them outright rather than ignoring them**: ``unknown flag `--mode` `` at exit `2`, before any network call. That is the good failure. A retrieval-mode habit carried onto a search fails loudly instead of quietly serving you a freshness you did not ask for. The two exceptions below are not retrieval commands either: they refuse retrieval *values*. **Two commands take a `--mode` that is a different flag wearing the same name, and both spend real money**: `job publish` and `recruiter job publish`, each `--mode FREE|PROMOTED|PROMOTED_PLUS`. They select how a posting is published. No retrieval value is valid there, and on both the flag is required rather than optional, so a retrieval habit is refused at exit `2` rather than silently promoting a posting. See `curviate-jobs` and `curviate-premium`. ## Reading a response - **Pass `--json` on anything you parse.** It is already the default when stdout is not a terminal; ask for it explicitly when a human might also be watching. - **An empty field in a default response is not proof the data does not exist.** Responses are projected, and several fields are withheld until `--verbose` asks for them, including a few that read exactly like "this member published nothing". Each area skill names its own. - **`--preview` before a write** renders the resolved request without sending it. On a read command it is refused at exit `2`.