Pp Irail

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iRail — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the irail-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 irail --cli-only

2. Verify: irail-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 1.26.5 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/travel/irail/cmd/irail-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.

iRail exposes live NMBS/SNCB departures, journey planning and disruptions for free with no API key. This CLI adds what every other client throws away: it records observations locally so punctuality can answer whether a train is chronically late, joins the open stations dataset so transfer-risk knows the real minimum transfer time at each station, and surfaces station accessibility data the API never returns. The analysis commands emit typed JSON - delays as numbers, cancellations as booleans - while the raw endpoint commands pass iRail's payload through unchanged.

When to Use This CLI

Use this CLI for anything involving Belgian passenger rail: when the next train leaves, how to get from one station to another, whether a journey is disrupted, and how reliable a route has been over time. It is the right tool when you need typed, scriptable output rather than a web page, and the only tool that can answer historical punctuality or transfer-risk questions. It also serves accessibility questions about Belgian stations that the live API cannot answer.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do not use this CLI to buy tickets, reserve seats or check fares; iRail is a read-only timetable API with no booking surface.
• Do not use it for rail networks outside Belgium; coverage is NMBS/SNCB plus a small number of cross-border stations.
• Do not use it for live vehicle GPS positions; the API reports scheduled and delayed times, not continuous tracking.
• Do not use it to query personal NMBS account data such as subscriptions or order history; that lives behind belgiantrain.be, which this CLI does not touch.

Unique Capabilities

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

Live data joined with open datasets

• transfer-risk — Tells you whether the transfers in a journey still hold once today's delays are applied.

  Reach for this instead of a plain route lookup whenever a journey has a transfer and delays are already in play.

  irail-pp-cli transfer-risk --from Oostende --to Hasselt --agent

• disruptions route — Filters the national disruption feed down to the stations your journey actually passes through.

  Use this when the national list is too noisy to answer whether one specific trip is affected.

  irail-pp-cli disruptions route --from Ghent-Sint-Pieters --to Brussels-Central --agent

• stations facilities — Reports step-free access, elevators, ramps, lockers, bike parking and ticket-desk hours for a station.

  Use this for accessibility and amenity questions that the live rail API simply cannot answer.

  irail-pp-cli stations facilities --station Ghent-Sint-Pieters --agent

Local state that compounds

• punctuality — Shows how reliable a train or route has actually been, from delay observations recorded on your machine.

  Use this for questions about the past such as chronic lateness; it never calls the API.

  irail-pp-cli punctuality --from Ghent-Sint-Pieters --to Brussels-Central --board-type route --agent

• observe — Records what the board says right now into local SQLite, building the history other commands read.

  Run this on a schedule; it is what makes punctuality and changes able to answer anything.

  irail-pp-cli observe --station Brussels-Central

• changes — Reports new delays, cancellations and platform changes since the last time you looked.

  Use this for deltas during a commute rather than re-reading a whole board.

  irail-pp-cli changes --station Brussels-Central --agent

Time reasoning done properly

• leave-by — Answers the last train you can take and still arrive before a deadline, accounting for current delays.

  Use this when the arrival deadline is fixed and the departure time is the unknown.

  irail-pp-cli leave-by --from Leuven --to Brussels-Central --arrive-by 09:00 --agent

Command Reference

board — Live departure and arrival boards for a station

• irail-pp-cli board — Live departures (or arrivals) at a station, with delay, platform and occupancy

disruptions — Network-wide disruptions and planned engineering works

• irail-pp-cli disruptions — Current disruptions and planned works across the whole network

logs — Recent iRail API request log entries

• irail-pp-cli logs — Last request log entries. Note: upstream currently returns an empty list; bulk archives live at gtfs.irail.be/logs/

route — Journey planning between two stations, with transfers and live delay

• irail-pp-cli route — Plan a journey between two stations, including transfers and per-leg delay

stations — Belgian and cross-border stations served by NMBS/SNCB

• irail-pp-cli stations — List every station iRail knows about (716 incl. cross-border)

train — Individual trains: full stop trace and physical composition

• irail-pp-cli train composition — Physical make-up of a train: segments, units, and per-carriage facilities
• irail-pp-cli train get — Every stop of one train with live delay. Note: iRail ignores the date parameter

Finding the right command

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

irail-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

Next departures, narrowed for an agent

irail-pp-cli board --station Brussels-Central --agent --select vehicle,delay,platform,canceled

A full board is roughly 34 KB of JSON; selecting four fields keeps the response small enough to reason over without burning context.

Will my transfer survive today's delays

irail-pp-cli transfer-risk --from Oostende --to Hasselt --agent

Joins live per-leg delay against each station's official minimum transfer time and flags transfers that no longer hold.

Only the disruptions that affect my commute

irail-pp-cli disruptions route --from Ghent-Sint-Pieters --to Brussels-Central --agent

Filters the national feed, which was 32 entries on a normal day, down to the stations this journey passes through.

Last train that still gets me there by nine

irail-pp-cli leave-by --from Leuven --to Brussels-Central --arrive-by 09:00 --agent

Plans backwards from the deadline and applies current delays plus a safety margin.

Is this station step-free

irail-pp-cli stations facilities --station Ghent-Sint-Pieters --agent

Reads the open facilities dataset for elevators, ramps and wheelchair access, none of which the rail API returns.

Auth Setup

No credentials are required: the iRail API is open and unauthenticated, so every command works immediately after install. Two operational limits matter instead of a key. iRail allows 3 requests per second per IP with 5 burst, returning HTTP 429 beyond that, so this CLI ships an adaptive rate limiter. iRail also blocks source IPs that send no User-Agent without prior warning, so every request carries an identifying User-Agent automatically.

Run irail-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:

  irail-pp-cli board --station Ghent-Sint-Pieters --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.

Paths and state

Agents should treat the CLI's path resolver as part of the runtime contract:

• Use --home <dir> for one invocation, or set IRAIL_HOME=<dir> to relocate all four path kinds under one root.

• Use per-kind env vars only when a specific kind must diverge: IRAIL_CONFIG_DIR, IRAIL_DATA_DIR, IRAIL_STATE_DIR, IRAIL_CACHE_DIR.

• Resolution order is per-kind env var, --home, IRAIL_HOME, XDG (XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_STATE_HOME, XDG_CACHE_HOME), then platform defaults.

• config contains settings like config.toml and profiles. data contains credentials.toml, data.db, cookies, and auth sidecars. state contains persisted queries, jobs, and teach.log. cache contains regenerable HTTP/cache files.

• Stored secrets live in credentials.toml under the data dir. Existing legacy config.toml secrets are read for compatibility and leave config.toml on the first auth write.

• Run irail-pp-cli doctor --fail-on warn to surface path and credential-location warnings. agent-context exposes a schema v4 paths block for agents that need the resolved dirs.

• For MCP, pass relocation through the MCP host config. The MCP binary does not inherit CLI flags:

  {
    "mcpServers": {
      "irail": {
        "command": "irail-pp-mcp",
        "env": {
          "IRAIL_HOME": "/srv/irail"
        }
      }
    }
  }

Fleet precedence: an inherited per-kind env var overrides an explicit --home for that kind. Use IRAIL_HOME or per-kind vars as durable fleet levers, and use --home only for a single invocation. Relocation is not reversible by unsetting env vars; move files manually before clearing IRAIL_HOME, or doctor will not find credentials left under the former root.

Automatic learning

This CLI ships a self-capturing learning loop. The CLI does its own bookkeeping: every invocation is journaled locally, a failed flag followed by a corrected retry auto-derives a flag_alias candidate, and a teach on a query family without a playbook auto-synthesizes a playbook_candidate from the session's journal. Your job is judgment only: recall first, act on surfaced candidates, teach the final answer, playbook amend when you observe a correction. You never record failures by hand.

Step 1: recall before any discovery

Before list/search/drill commands on a new user question, run:

irail-pp-cli recall "<user's question>" --agent

The response envelope:

{
  "query": "...",
  "normalized": "<normalized form>",
  "query_entities": ["..."],
  "found": true | false,
  "match_score": 0.0,
  "results": [
    { "resource_id": "...", "resource_type": "...", "venue": "...",
      "confidence": 2, "entity_match": "exact|partial|unknown",
      "source": "taught|preseed|pattern", "warnings": ["..."] }
  ],
  "mismatches": [ /* only when --debug-mismatches */ ],
  "warnings": [ /* top-level */ ],
  "candidates": [
    { "id": 12, "class": "flag_alias | playbook_candidate",
      "summary": "...", "sightings": 3, "last_seen": "...",
      "rationale": "...",
      "next_action": ["<trial command>", "irail-pp-cli learnings confirm 12"] }
  ],
  "playbook": {
    "query_family": "...",
    "playbook": {
      "steps": [ { "cmd": "<command with {slot} substitution>", "purpose": "..." } ],
      "entity_slots": ["$ENTITY"],
      "expected_tool_calls": 3
    },
    "slots_resolved": { "$ENTITY": { "token": "<live token>", "canonical": "<canonical>" } },
    "notes": "<workarounds + gotchas for this query family>"
  },
  "notes": "<duplicate surface for non-playbook callers>"
}

Empty-store short-circuit: if the store has no learnings, playbooks, or candidates yet (recall finds nothing and learnings list and learnings candidates are both empty), skip recall for the rest of this session instead of taxing every query; resume recall-first once something has been taught.

Step 2: decision tree

Read candidates, playbook, notes, results[0], and warnings in that order:

if Candidates present (warnings include "candidates_present"):
    -> candidates are try-then-confirm, never facts. Follow each candidate's
       two-step next_action verbatim: run the trial command first, then run
       `learnings confirm <id>` only after the trial verified the behavior.
       Reject a wrong candidate with `learnings reject <id>`.
    -> NEVER re-teach something recall surfaced as a candidate; confirm or
       reject that candidate instead of teaching a duplicate.
    -> candidates ride alongside playbooks and resource hits, not instead of
       them; continue with the branches below after acting on them.

if Playbook present:
    -> READ Playbook.notes verbatim FIRST (workarounds + gotchas the CLI surface doesn't expose)
    -> replay Playbook.steps in order, substituting Playbook.slots_resolved entries
       for the entity slot tokens. If a step's slot is unresolved, fall back to
       discovery for that step only.
    -> the Playbook's expected_tool_calls is a budget; if you find yourself running
       materially more, record the divergence via `irail-pp-cli playbook amend`
       at end-of-session.

elif Notes present (no Playbook):
    -> read Notes verbatim before any discovery step; they carry known gotchas
       for this query family even when no structured choreography exists yet.

elif Found AND Results[0].EntityMatch == "exact" AND Results[0].Confidence >= 2:
    -> skip discovery; fetch live data for Results[*].ResourceID in parallel

elif Found AND Results[0].EntityMatch == "partial":
    -> candidate hint, NOT a hit; read the resource title to validate before trusting

elif (any row in Mismatches[] when --debug-mismatches was passed):
    -> treat as cold start; the stored learning is for a different entity
       (different canonical resolved from query_entities)

else:  // Found == false, no playbook, no notes
    -> cold start; run discovery normally; teach the answer afterward (Step 4).
       If the family has no playbook yet, that teach auto-synthesizes a
       playbook candidate from this session's journal - you do not need to
       record one by hand.

Playbook and Notes are orthogonal to the per-resource path. A recall response can carry both a Playbook AND a Results[] hit - use both: the Playbook tells you which choreography to run; the resource hits short-circuit specific steps. Default to skipping mismatches; pass --debug-mismatches only when investigating cold-start surprises.

Candidate judgment details: learnings confirm <id> prints the candidate's full payload before materializing it - check that the printed payload matches the behavior you verified. learnings reject <id> tombstones the derivation signature so the same candidate does not resurface. The envelope carries only the few candidates worth acting on now; irail-pp-cli learnings candidates lists the full open set.

Graceful degradation: if learnings confirm is an unknown command, you are driving an older binary - ignore the candidates guidance and follow the rest of the protocol.

Step 3: always read warnings

• low_confidence: row exists at confidence<2. Treat as a hint, not a skip-discovery hit.
• resource_not_in_store: the local store doesn't have the resource the learning points at. The match validator couldn't classify entities — direct-fetch and re-evaluate.
• cross_alias_match (per-result): the row was taught under a different alias and matched the live query's canonical via entity_lookups (e.g., a "USA" teach satisfying a "United States" recall). Trust the resource_id.
• similar_shape_different_entity:<canonical> (top-level): a structurally matching row exists but its canonical entity differs from the live query's. Treated as cold start; the warning carries the conflicting canonical as a hint, but the row is NOT promoted into Results.
• ambiguous_alias (top-level): a single query entity resolved to multiple canonicals (e.g., "Cards" → Arizona Cardinals + St. Louis Cardinals). Surface the ambiguity from context before committing to a resource.
• candidates_present (top-level): the envelope carries a candidates section. Handle it via the candidates branch in Step 2 before anything else.
• lookup_refresh_available (top-level): an entity in the query has no lookup row yet, but synced data could provide one. Run irail-pp-cli sync to refresh entity lookups.
• Top-level no_learnings_for_query_family: the table had no rows above the Jaccard floor. Pure cold start.