Pp Roadside America

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Roadside America — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the roadside-america-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 roadside-america --cli-only

2. Verify: roadside-america-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/travel/roadside-america/cmd/roadside-america-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.

RoadsideAmerica.com is the web's best catalog of quirky US & Canada tourist attractions, but it has no API and a paywalled app. This CLI turns it into an agent-native, pipe-friendly tool: find what's near a place or coordinates, browse a whole state, pull the full writeup, and slice by superlative categories like biggest/smallest/tallest/weird-food. Everything is cached locally (fresh-on-read), every record links back to its source, and the scraper stays a polite, attributing, user-initiated citizen of the site.

When to Use This CLI

Use this CLI to discover offbeat, quirky, community-sourced roadside attractions in the US and Canada from RoadsideAmerica.com: what's near a place or coordinates, what's in a given state, the full writeup for a specific attraction, or superlative slices like the biggest/smallest/tallest things and weird food stops. It is ideal for road-trip planning and 'find me something weird nearby' tasks, and it caches everything locally for fast, repeatable, offline-friendly queries.

Anti-triggers

Do not use this CLI for:

• Do not use for booking, ticketing, hours, or live availability — the data is descriptive, community-sourced, and not real-time.
• Do not treat addresses as authoritative for navigation; verify before driving.
• Do not use outside the US and Canada (the source only covers those).
• Do not use for mainstream tourism, restaurant reviews, or hotels — this is offbeat oddities only.

Unique Capabilities

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

Local cache intelligence

• category — Find the biggest, smallest, tallest, or weird-food attractions (and more) by classifying cached attractions locally.

  Reach for this when the user wants superlatives or a themed slice (giants, muffler-men, weird-food) rather than a place- or state-scoped list.

  roadside-america-pp-cli category biggest --json

• stats — Summarize the local cache: counts by state and by category, plus totals.

  Use to understand coverage of the local cache before planning, or to answer 'which state has the most offbeat stuff cached'.

  roadside-america-pp-cli stats --agent

• random — Pick a random offbeat attraction, optionally constrained by state or category.

  Use for serendipity or road-trip inspiration when the user has no specific target.

  roadside-america-pp-cli random --state TX

Route & comparison

• trip — Collect quirky stops near a list of cities or coordinates in one call, deduped and labeled by stop.

  Reach for this when planning a route and the user wants offbeat stops across several waypoints at once.

  roadside-america-pp-cli trip "Austin, TX" "Waco, TX" --radius 15 --json

• compare — Compare two states by offbeat-attraction count and surface a few top picks from each.

  Use when the user is deciding between regions or wants a quick 'which state is weirder' answer.

  roadside-america-pp-cli compare TX CA

Command Reference

raw — Raw RoadsideAmerica.com passthrough (HTML link/page extraction). Prefer the top-level near / state / show / category commands for structured output.

• roadside-america-pp-cli raw by-state — Raw attraction links for a US/Canada state (HTML fragment).
• roadside-america-pp-cli raw detail — Raw attraction detail page (HTML).
• roadside-america-pp-cli raw nearby — Raw nearby attraction links for coordinates (HTML fragment).

Finding the right command

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

roadside-america-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

Quirky stops near coordinates, agent-friendly fields

roadside-america-pp-cli near 30.27,-97.74 --radius 25 --agent --select name,city,distance,source_url

Pass raw lat,lng to skip geocoding and select only the fields an agent needs.

Weird food across a cached state

roadside-america-pp-cli category weird-food --json

Classifies cached attractions by food keywords; populate the cache with state/near first.

Plan offbeat stops across a route

roadside-america-pp-cli trip "Austin, TX" "Waco, TX" "Dallas, TX" --radius 15 --json

Aggregates nearby attractions for each waypoint, deduped and labeled by stop.

Full writeup with source attribution

roadside-america-pp-cli show 2055 --json

Returns structured name/address/writeup plus the RoadsideAmerica.com source URL.

Auth Setup

No authentication required.

Run roadside-america-pp-cli doctor to verify setup.