Visit Detroit Blog CLI

Detroit's official "Inside the D" blog as a CLI — every article searchable offline, sliced across category and neighborhood at once, with related-reads and exports the website can't produce.

Inside the D CLI mirrors Visit Detroit's editorial blog into a local SQLite store, so you can full-text search every article body offline and then slice it by category, neighborhood, and date in a single query (blogs list) — something the site's single-facet instant-search can't do. blogs related surfaces articles that share the most topics and neighborhoods; blogs coverage maps where the blog is dense or thin; blogs reading-list exports a neutral, sponsored-free reading list for a team.

Created by @stanrails (stanrails).

Quick Start

# Pull the full Inside the D blog into the local store. Run once; re-run to refresh.
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli sync

# Ranked full-text search across every article body, offline.
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli search "ethiopian food"

# The cross-axis filter the website's single-facet search can't do.
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list --category Dining --region Corktown

# Read the full article body in your terminal — no browser.
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs get donuts

# Find related reads by shared category and neighborhood.
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs related donuts --limit 5

Unique Features

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

Queries the website can't express

• blogs list — Filter Detroit articles by category AND neighborhood AND date window in one query — the slice the website's single-facet search can't express.

  Reach for this when a request combines a topic and a place (and optionally recency) — e.g. 'recent dining articles in Corktown' — instead of issuing several single-facet searches and intersecting them by hand.

  inside-the-d-pp-cli blogs list --category Dining --region Corktown --since 2026-01-01 --agent
  

• blogs related — Find the articles that share the most categories and neighborhoods with a given post, ranked.

  Use this to chain recommendations — after surfacing one good article, hand the user (or yourself) the next best reads without another keyword search.

  inside-the-d-pp-cli blogs related donuts --limit 5 --agent
  

• blogs coverage — Cross-tabulate article counts across every category and every neighborhood to see where coverage is dense or thin.

  Use this to answer 'which neighborhoods have the most Outdoors coverage' or to spot gaps before recommending an under-covered area.

  inside-the-d-pp-cli blogs coverage --category Outdoors --agent
  

Take it with you

• blogs reading-list — Materialize an ordered, deduped reading list (markdown/json/csv) from any filter to a file — with an option to drop sponsored posts for a neutral handout.

  Use this when a person needs to hand a curated, source-stable list to a team or attendee — not a one-off query that disappears when the tab closes.

  inside-the-d-pp-cli blogs reading-list --region "Downtown Detroit" --category Culture --no-sponsored --output detroit-culture.md
  

Usage

Run visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli --help for the full command reference and flag list.

Commands

Run visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli sync once to populate the local store, then:

blogs — browse, read, and analyze articles

• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list - filter articles across category, neighborhood, and date (--category, --region, --since, --until, --no-sponsored, --limit)
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs get <slug> - read a full article body by slug, URI, or id
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs related <slug> - articles sharing the most categories and neighborhoods
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs coverage - category × neighborhood cross-tab (--category, --region)
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs reading-list - export an ordered md/json/csv reading list (--output)

Top-level

• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli search <query> - offline ranked full-text search
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli categories - list blog categories with article counts
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli regions - list neighborhoods/regions with article counts
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli recent - newest articles by post date
• visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli sync - pull all articles into the local store

Output Formats

# Human-readable table (default in terminal, JSON when piped)
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list

# JSON for scripting and agents
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list --json

# Filter to specific fields
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list --json --select title,url,categories

# Dry run — show the request without sending
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list --dry-run

# Agent mode — JSON + compact + no prompts in one flag
visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli blogs list --agent

Agent Usage

This CLI is designed for AI agent consumption:

• Non-interactive - never prompts, every input is a flag
• Pipeable - --json output to stdout, errors to stderr
• Filterable - --select title,url,categories returns only fields you need
• Previewable - --dry-run shows the request without sending
• Read-only by default - this CLI does not create, update, delete, publish, send, or mutate remote resources
• Offline-friendly - sync/search commands can use the local SQLite store when available
• Agent-safe by default - no colors or formatting unless --human-friendly is set

Exit codes: 0 success, 2 usage error, 3 not found, 5 API error, 7 rate limited, 10 config error.

Health Check

visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli doctor

Verifies configuration and connectivity to the API.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli/config.json (override with VISIT_DETROIT_BLOG_CONFIG).

No authentication is required — the blog is served through a public, search-only Algolia key embedded in the Visit Detroit site. If that key ever rotates, override it with the VISIT_DETROIT_BLOG_ALGOLIA_API_KEY (and VISIT_DETROIT_BLOG_ALGOLIA_APP_ID) environment variables.

Troubleshooting

Not found errors (exit code 3)

• Check the resource ID is correct
• Run the list command to see available items

API-specific

• search / blogs list returns nothing — Run visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli sync first — search and list read the local store, which is empty until the first sync.
• sync prints a sync_warning with status 403 — The public Algolia search key embedded in the site rotated. Update it via VISIT_DETROIT_BLOG_ALGOLIA_API_KEY, or re-run /printing-press to re-discover the current key.
• a category or region filter returns 0 results — Run visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli categories or regions to see the exact facet spellings (e.g. "Downtown Detroit", not "downtown").
• results look stale vs the live site — Re-run visit-detroit-blog-pp-cli sync to refresh the local store from Algolia.

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