Pp Apple Docs

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Apple Developer Documentation — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the apple-docs-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 apple-docs --cli-only

2. Verify: apple-docs-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 1.26.6 or newer):

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/developer-tools/apple-docs/cmd/apple-docs-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

Reach for this CLI when you need to read Apple's docs from a terminal, when an agent is grounding Swift code generation against current Apple APIs, when planning a platform migration (iPad → visionOS, AppKit → SwiftUI), or when authoring a 'what's deprecated in iOS N' guide. The local SQLite store unlocks queries — cross-framework grep, snapshot diff, deprecation cliff — that no online docs viewer offers.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do not use this CLI to author Apple ID or App Store Connect API calls — use a separate App Store Connect CLI for those.
• Do not use this CLI as a Swift package manager — it reads docs, not source.
• Do not use this CLI to fetch full WWDC video transcripts — it indexes WWDC references from doc pages but does not host video content.

Unique Capabilities

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

Agent-native plumbing

• doc get — Project a 50KB+ DocC JSON page down to just the fields an agent actually needs — abstract, signature, platforms, or all three — saving context tokens on every lookup.

  Use this when an agent is grounding code generation against an Apple symbol and only needs the abstract + signature + platform floor, not the full discussion + see-also tree.

  apple-docs-pp-cli doc get 'swiftui/view/onappear(perform:)' --shape min --agent

• bundle — Bundle a symbol's Markdown plus its depth-1 See-Also pages into a single token-budgeted blob, ready to paste into an agent prompt.

  Use when an agent needs a self-contained context blob about a symbol plus its closest relatives, without doing N round-trips and N JSON parses.

  apple-docs-pp-cli bundle 'swiftui/view/onappear(perform:)' --depth 1 --max-tokens 4000

Local state that compounds

• port-to — For a symbol unavailable on a target platform, walk the See-Also / Replacement-Of graph until landing on an alternative that IS available there and is not itself deprecated.

  Use when porting code between Apple platforms (iPad → visionOS, AppKit → SwiftUI, deprecated → current) and you need the migration target, not just a similar-named API.

  apple-docs-pp-cli port-to visionOS uikit/uitableview --agent

• snapshot diff — Diff two stored framework index snapshots and classify each delta as added, removed, deprecated, or likely-renamed (path-stem similarity).

  Use after every WWDC or dot-release to surface added/removed/deprecated symbols at the framework level.

  apple-docs-pp-cli snapshot diff swiftui --from 2025-06-09 --to 2026-05-28 --agent

• deprecation-cliff — List every Apple API deprecated in a given platform version, grouped by framework and symbol kind, with the replacement-hint column joined from references.

  Use when planning a migration sprint or writing a 'what's deprecated this year' guide; the only way to get the full list in one shot.

  apple-docs-pp-cli deprecation-cliff --os iOS --version 18 --framework swiftui --agent

• conformance — Walk a framework's relationshipsSections to enumerate concrete conformers of a protocol and the protocol's ancestors.

  Use when writing protocol-driven code (custom View, ObservableObject, Layout) and you need every concrete type that conforms.

  apple-docs-pp-cli conformance View --framework swiftui --agent

• grep — Regex over every synced framework's symbols with filters on kind, target platform, and deprecation status.

  Use when you remember the shape of a symbol name but not where it lives, or when auditing API patterns across the whole Apple SDK.

  apple-docs-pp-cli grep onAppear --framework swiftui --json

Service-specific patterns

• wwdc symbols — For a WWDC session ID, list every symbol whose doc page cites that session.

  Use after watching a WWDC session to enumerate every API it touched, or to find which session officially introduced an API you're working with.

  apple-docs-pp-cli wwdc symbols wwdc2024-10169 --agent

Command Reference

doc get — Fetch any documentation page (framework root, symbol, method, article) by path

• apple-docs-pp-cli doc get <path> — Fetch a documentation page by path and return it in the shape your tool actually wants (raw DocC JSON, projected via --shape abstract|signature|platforms|min, or rendered as Markdown via --markdown). The path is the lowercase-slashed identifier under /documentation/, e.g. swiftui/view, swiftui/view/onappear(perform:), foundation/url/init(string:).

index — Fetch the full structured index of a framework (every symbol, in tree form)

• apple-docs-pp-cli index <framework> — Fetch a framework's full hierarchical index. Useful for offline FTS sync. Indexes are large (500KB–2MB).

technologies — List every Apple framework and technology (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, etc.)

• apple-docs-pp-cli technologies — Fetch the master technologies index — every Apple framework, grouped by topic.

Freshness Contract

This printed CLI owns bounded freshness only for registered store-backed read command paths. In --data-source auto mode, those paths check sync_state and may run a bounded refresh before reading local data. --data-source local never refreshes. --data-source live reads the API and does not mutate the local store. Set APPLE_DOCS_NO_AUTO_REFRESH=1 to skip the freshness hook without changing source selection.

Covered paths:

• apple-docs-pp-cli technologies
• apple-docs-pp-cli technologies get
• apple-docs-pp-cli technologies list
• apple-docs-pp-cli technologies search

When JSON output uses the generated provenance envelope, freshness metadata appears at meta.freshness. Treat it as current-cache freshness for the covered command path, not a guarantee of complete historical backfill or API-specific enrichment.

Finding the right command

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

apple-docs-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.