pp-thelancet

The Lancet — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the thelancet-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 thelancet --cli-only
   

2. Verify: thelancet-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 1.26.4 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/other/thelancet/cmd/thelancet-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.

The Lancet CLI gives researchers and institutions offline access to The Lancet family of journals via OpenAlex. Beyond search and fetch, it ranks researchers by citation impact within a specialty (rank-authors), maps institutional co-authorship networks (mesh), tracks which institutions are publishing more over time (affiliation-growth), and detects how a journal's editorial focus shifts (drift) — insights impossible from single API queries or paywalled tools.

When to Use This CLI

Use this CLI to answer questions about The Lancet's research landscape offline and without API throttling: literature reviews, tracking institutional publication trends, finding collaborators, and analyzing how medical research evolves over time.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do NOT use this CLI for real-time article feeds or breaking news; it syncs periodically from OpenAlex, not continuously
• Do NOT use this for journal submission or peer-review status; it mirrors published works, not the editorial pipeline
• Do NOT use this for full-text access to paywalled articles; it returns metadata, topics, and links only

Unique Capabilities

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

Local data compounds

• rank-authors — Rank researchers at your institution by citation impact within a specific Lancet journal or topic.

  Grant managers and department heads use this to identify who is leading at your institution in a specific field; agents can use it to find high-impact collaborators.

  thelancet-pp-cli rank-authors --institution 'Harvard' --journal lancet-oncology --json
  

• mesh — Find researchers at your institution who co-author Lancet papers and quantify how their work connects.

  Librarians and research directors use this to uncover collaboration opportunities and map how an institution's researchers connect through Lancet.

  thelancet-pp-cli mesh --org 'Stanford University' --json
  

• affiliation-growth — Track institutions gaining publication velocity in Lancet journals; identify rising research centers.

  Strategy teams track this to understand competitive research landscapes and identify emerging partner institutions.

  thelancet-pp-cli affiliation-growth --journal lancet-neurology --years 5 --json
  

• visibility-gap — Find authors whose citation impact is out of step with the prestige of the Lancet journals they publish in.

  Grant managers and research directors use this to identify under-recognized talent for promotion or collaboration.

  thelancet-pp-cli visibility-gap --institution 'Oxford' --json
  

Offline analysis

• drift — Compare how a journal's topic distribution shifts between two time windows; spot emerging and fading specialties.

  Research strategists use this to align their work with journal editorial priorities and detect when journal scope shifts.

  thelancet-pp-cli drift --journal lancet-oncology --window1 2018:2020 --window2 2023:2024 --json
  

• curate — Auto-generate ranked reading lists for a topic, sorted by date/citations/relevance, exportable as Markdown or BibTeX.

  Librarians and researchers use this to quickly assemble authoritative reading lists without manual screening.

  thelancet-pp-cli curate --topic 'gene therapy' --sort citations --output bibtex
  

Command Reference

authors — Search and retrieve authors

• thelancet-pp-cli authors get — Get a single author by OpenAlex ID
• thelancet-pp-cli authors search — Search authors

sources — Journal (source) metadata

• thelancet-pp-cli sources <id> — Get a journal (source) by ISSN or OpenAlex ID

works — Search and retrieve Lancet articles

• thelancet-pp-cli works get — Get a single article by OpenAlex ID or DOI
• thelancet-pp-cli works search — Search Lancet articles (works)

Finding the right command

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

thelancet-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

Build a topic reading list for a literature review

thelancet-pp-cli curate --topic 'machine learning diagnosis' --sort citations --output bibtex > review.bib

Generate a citation-ranked, BibTeX-exportable reading list on a topic across Lancet journals in one command.

Narrow a deeply nested works response for an agent

thelancet-pp-cli works search --search 'immunotherapy' --per-page 10 --agent --select results.title,results.cited_by_count,results.authorships.author.display_name

OpenAlex works are large and deeply nested; pair --agent with dotted --select paths to return only the fields you need and save context.

Spot editorial drift in a specialty journal

thelancet-pp-cli drift --journal lancet-oncology --window1 2018:2020 --window2 2023:2024 --top-n 15

Compare topic distributions across two multi-year windows to see which specialties the journal now publishes more or less of.

Local JSON API (serve)

serve starts a local HTTP server that exposes the two analytics engines as read-only JSON endpoints — the bridge between this CLI's local mirror and the Lancet web portal (or any local tool that prefers HTTP over shelling out):

thelancet-pp-cli serve
thelancet-pp-cli serve --listen 127.0.0.1:9090

• GET /affiliations — mirrors affiliation-growth. Query params: journal (slug, default all), years (default 5), threshold (default 2), limit (default 25). Returns the same JSON array (institution, recent_count, prior_count, growth).

  curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/affiliations?journal=lancet-neurology&years=5'
  

• GET /authors — mirrors rank-authors. Query params: journal, institution (substring match), limit (default 25). Returns the same JSON array (author_id, author_name, works, total_citations, avg_citations).

  curl 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/authors?institution=Oxford&limit=10'
  

Invalid parameters return 400 with {"error": "..."}; engine failures return 500 with a generic structured error. Use --db to point at a non-default database path. Stop with Ctrl+C (graceful shutdown).

Security note: the server binds to loopback (127.0.0.1:8080) by default and is strictly read-only — it never syncs, writes, or mutates data. Do not point --listen at a public interface; there is no authentication.

Auth Setup

No authentication required.

Run thelancet-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:

  thelancet-pp-cli authors get 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

• 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 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.

Agent Feedback

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

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

Entries are stored locally at ~/.local/share/thelancet-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl. They are never POSTed unless THELANCET_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or THELANCET_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.

thelancet-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
thelancet-pp-cli --profile briefing authors get mock-value
thelancet-pp-cli profile list --json
thelancet-pp-cli profile show briefing
thelancet-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:

1. Empty, help, or --help → show thelancet-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/other/thelancet/cmd/thelancet-pp-mcp@latest
   

2. Register with Claude Code:

   claude mcp add thelancet-pp-mcp -- thelancet-pp-mcp
   

3. Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

1. Check if installed: which thelancet-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:

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

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