pp-adminbyrequest

Admin By Request — Printing Press CLI

Prerequisites: Install the CLI

This skill drives the adminbyrequest-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 adminbyrequest --cli-only
   

2. Verify: adminbyrequest-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):

go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/devices/adminbyrequest/cmd/adminbyrequest-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

Use this CLI when you are administering an Admin By Request tenant from a terminal or AI agent: triaging pending requests in bulk, pulling audit data into a SIEM you have not yet wired up, generating offline PINs without opening the portal, or answering cross-resource questions (repeat requestors, agent-version drift) that the portal does not directly support.

Unique Capabilities

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

Local state that compounds

• requests repeat-offenders — Surface the top users by elevation-request count over a configurable window, so admins can spot patterns the portal does not visualize.

  When tracing repeated elevation attempts across a fleet, this is the single query that names the people; without it, an agent has to walk every request and aggregate manually.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli requests repeat-offenders --window 30d --json
  

• correlate — Given an audit log entry ID, join it to nearby events on the same computer to reconstruct a full elevation timeline.

  Incident response often asks what else happened on this machine when this admin session opened; this is the single command that answers it.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli correlate 50461167 --window 5m --json
  

Fleet hygiene

• inventory drift — List endpoints whose AbR client version is older than a target version, useful for upgrade campaigns.

  Before any compliance audit, the agent should know which endpoints are running an old client; this is the one-liner.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli inventory drift --client-version 8.7.2 --json
  

• inventory risk-score — Score each endpoint by elevation frequency, local-admin count, and AbR client version recency.

  Lets an admin focus remediation effort on the endpoints most likely to be abused.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli inventory risk-score --top 10 --json
  

Reachability mitigation

• quota forecast — Track local API call count against the 100k-per-day quota and predict whether the current pace will exceed it before midnight.

  Reachability mitigation: an agent that calls the API in a loop needs to know before it bricks the tenant for the day.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli quota forecast --json
  

Compliance and review

• requests denied-reasons — Tokenize the free-text deniedReason field across all denied requests and emit a top-N word distribution.

  For compliance review and tone-of-policy checks, surfacing the actual words used is faster than reading each row.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli requests denied-reasons --top 20 --json
  

• report compliance — Render audit entries for a user or computer over a window in a format suitable for auditors (CSV or markdown).

  Auditor evidence requests always want a single artifact; this generates it in one command.

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli report compliance --since 2026-01-01 --user CHRISCOOMBES --format md
  

Command Reference

auditlog — Admin session and elevation audit log entries

• adminbyrequest-pp-cli auditlog delta — Delta query for audit log changes (use timeNow/deltaTime ticks for resumable sync)
• adminbyrequest-pp-cli auditlog list — List audit log entries (admin sessions, app elevations, denied requests). Pagination is by id cursor.

events — Security and operational events emitted by AbR clients

• adminbyrequest-pp-cli events — List events. Use code filter to narrow to specific event types.

inventory — Endpoint inventory: hardware, software, OS, AbR agent version

• adminbyrequest-pp-cli inventory list — List inventoried endpoints. Use wantsoftware/wanthardware to expand.
• adminbyrequest-pp-cli inventory pin — Generate an offline elevation PIN code for a device. Pass --challenge for challenge-response mode.

requests — Pending, approved, and denied elevation requests

• adminbyrequest-pp-cli requests approve — Approve a pending elevation request.
• adminbyrequest-pp-cli requests deny — Deny a pending elevation request.
• adminbyrequest-pp-cli requests list — List elevation requests filtered by status.

Hand-written commands

• adminbyrequest-pp-cli correlate <auditlog-id> — Join an audit log entry to nearby events on the same computer (window in minutes)
• adminbyrequest-pp-cli report — Render compliance reports from synced data
• adminbyrequest-pp-cli quota — Track local API call count vs AbR's 100k/day quota

Finding the right command

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

adminbyrequest-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

Triage pending requests as JSON

adminbyrequest-pp-cli requests list --status pending --agent --select id,user.account,reason

Surface the pending elevation queue in agent-friendly JSON narrowed to the fields needed to decide. Approve or deny individual ids with requests approve <id> --reason ... or requests deny <id> --reason ....

Compliance evidence for one user

adminbyrequest-pp-cli report compliance --since 2026-01-01 --user CHRISCOOMBES --format md > evidence.md

Render every audit log entry for a user since a date into a markdown report.

Find every device on an old client

adminbyrequest-pp-cli inventory drift --client-version 8.7.2 --json --select name,abrClientVersion

Inventory drift filters the synced inventory snapshot for endpoints below the target client version.

Check today's API quota consumption

adminbyrequest-pp-cli quota show --agent

Local counter of API calls made today; the CLI tracks them in ~/.cache/adminbyrequest-pp-cli/http/ so this command itself never costs an API call.

Audit-to-event timeline narrowed via --select

adminbyrequest-pp-cli correlate 50461167 --window 5m --agent --select audit.application.name,audit.user.account,events.eventText,events.eventTime

Joins audit entry to nearby events on the same computer; --select narrows the deeply nested response so the agent does not parse the full payload.

Auth Setup

Set ADMINBYREQUEST_API_KEY in your environment. The CLI sends it via the apikey header. AbR enforces a 100,000-call daily quota per tenant; the CLI tracks calls locally and warns you before exhaustion via quota forecast.

Run adminbyrequest-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:

  adminbyrequest-pp-cli auditlog 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 — piped/agent consumers get pure JSON on stdout.

Agent Feedback

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

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

Entries are stored locally at ~/.adminbyrequest-pp-cli/feedback.jsonl. They are never POSTed unless ADMINBYREQUEST_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT is set AND either --send is passed or ADMINBYREQUEST_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:

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.

adminbyrequest-pp-cli profile save briefing --json
adminbyrequest-pp-cli --profile briefing auditlog list
adminbyrequest-pp-cli profile list --json
adminbyrequest-pp-cli profile show briefing
adminbyrequest-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

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS:

1. Empty, help, or --help → show adminbyrequest-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

Install the MCP binary from this CLI's published public-library entry or pre-built release, then register it:

claude mcp add adminbyrequest-pp-mcp -- adminbyrequest-pp-mcp

Verify: claude mcp list

Direct Use

1. Check if installed: which adminbyrequest-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:

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

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