Pp Mixlayer

Mixlayer — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the mixlayer-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 mixlayer --cli-only

2. Verify: mixlayer-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). 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/ai/mixlayer/cmd/mixlayer-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.

Use this skill for Mixlayer chat completions, privacy-safe frontier prompts, model-rung comparisons, reasoning ledger search, and local cost analysis.

Unique Capabilities

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

• shield ingest — Split large CSV/text inputs into deterministic tranches, redact each tranche through one shared local vault, and reassemble a masked corpus with a manifest.
• shield ask — Redact local data, run an outbound PII tripwire, send only the masked payload to a frontier model, rehydrate the answer locally, and save a privacy receipt.
• shield scan — Detect high-risk PII locally with CI-friendly exit codes and no upstream model call.
• shield redact — Write a masked copy of a file and populate the local token-to-value vault with stable pseudonyms.
• shield restructure — Drop columns, bucket numeric values, and coarsen dates to reduce re-identification risk before prompting.
• vault — List, rehydrate, rotate, or purge the local reversible pseudonym vault without sending values upstream.
• shield audit — Inspect outbound payload hashes, byte counts, model IDs, masked entity counts, and residual leak counts for shielded sends.
• ladder — Run one prompt across selected Mixlayer model rungs, optionally comparing reasoning_content, latency, token usage, and cost.
• escalate — Start on a cheap rung and climb only when the prior answer appears insufficiently confident.
• council — Fan out to member model rungs and ask a judge model to synthesize answers and flag disagreements.
• ask — Ask Mixlayer, optionally request reasoning_content, and save prompt, answer, model, seed, token usage, cost, and raw response locally.
• replay — Re-run a saved prompt with its original model and seed to check determinism or drift.
• grep — Search saved prompts, answers, and reasoning traces through the local FTS ledger.
• models query — Query a local model cache with DSL terms like ctx>=128k tools reasoning, seed it with documented and console-visible model IDs, and optionally refresh it from live /models.
• sql — Run SELECT-only SQLite queries over the local ledger, vault, audit, ladder, and model cache tables.
• savings — Roll up saved ledger cost against static GPT or Claude frontier baselines.
• compare — Run a prompt through a cheap rung and frontier rung, report the cost delta, and attach a local-history quality note.

Command Reference

chat — OpenAI-compatible chat completions

• mixlayer-pp-cli chat — Create a chat completion for the given model and messages

models — Browse the model catalog

• mixlayer-pp-cli models get — Retrieve a model by ID
• mixlayer-pp-cli models list — List all available models
• mixlayer-pp-cli models query — Query the cached model catalog with a small DSL

privacy firewall

• mixlayer-pp-cli shield scan <file> --max-risk 0 --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli shield redact <file> --diff -o masked.txt
• mixlayer-pp-cli shield ingest <bigfile> -o masked.txt --manifest tranches.json
• mixlayer-pp-cli shield ask "<question>" --data <file> --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli shield audit --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli vault list --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli vault rehydrate <text-or-file>

reasoning and cost

• mixlayer-pp-cli ask "<question>" --show-thinking --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli replay <run-id> --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli grep "<pattern>" --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli ladder "<question>" --reasoning --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli escalate "<question>" --confidence 0.85 --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli council "<question>" --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli sql "select model, count(*) from runs group by model" --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli savings --vs gpt-frontier --json
• mixlayer-pp-cli compare "<question>" --json

Finding the right command

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

mixlayer-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.

Auth Setup

Run mixlayer-pp-cli auth setup for the URL and steps to obtain a token (add --launch to open the URL). Then store it:

mixlayer-pp-cli auth set-token YOUR_TOKEN_HERE

Or set MIXLAYER_API_KEY as an environment variable.

Run mixlayer-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:

  mixlayer-pp-cli models list --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

• Explicit retries — use --idempotent only when an already-existing create should count as success

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.