Developer Tools

Domain Goat

pp-domain-goat

Identify domains worth buying — across RDAP, WHOIS, and Porkbun pricing — without ever leaving the terminal.

Printed by @mitch-nick (Mitch Nick)

Install

npx — recommended

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install domain-goat

Installs the CLI binary and the agent skill (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, and more). Add --cli-only or --skill-only for one half. Requires Node.

Hermes

hermes skills install mvanhorn/printing-press-library/cli-skills/pp-domain-goat --force

From the Hermes CLI. Inside a chat session use /skills install with the same path.

OpenClaw

Install the pp-domain-goat skill from https://github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/tree/main/cli-skills/pp-domain-goat. The skill defines how its required CLI can be installed.

Paste this to your OpenClaw agent — the skill describes how to install its CLI.

Claude Desktop

This CLI ships an MCPB bundle. Download the latest release .mcpb and double-click it — Claude Desktop walks you through the install.

View source on GitHub →

Identify domains worth buying — across RDAP, WHOIS, and Porkbun pricing — without ever leaving the terminal.

domain-goat absorbs everything dnstwist, openrdap, whois, and the abandoned domainr-cli ever did, then transcends with a local SQLite shortlist that knows your scores, your notes, your watch list, and 5-year renewal cost for every TLD — so you can find domains worth registering instead of just typing names into instant-domain-search.com five at a time.

Authentication

No auth required for the headline path. RDAP, WHOIS port 43, and the Porkbun public pricing endpoint are all open.

The optional Namecheap adapter enriches live availability and pricing when you export the following before invoking namecheap commands:

NAMECHEAP_USERNAME (or legacy NAMECHEAP_API_USER)
NAMECHEAP_API_KEY
NAMECHEAP_CLIENT_IP — your whitelisted client IP (required by Namecheap)

Set NAMECHEAP_SANDBOX=1 to hit the sandbox endpoint. Verify configuration with domain-goat-pp-cli doctor.

Quick Start

# Pull the IANA RDAP bootstrap and Porkbun pricing snapshot once — everything offline after this.
domain-goat-pp-cli tlds sync

# RDAP-native availability with WHOIS fallback for the three TLDs you're stuck on.
domain-goat-pp-cli check kindred.io kindred.ai kindred.studio --json

# Generate 50 brandable variants, filter to only available ones, all offline.
domain-goat-pp-cli gen suggest --seeds kindred,studio --tlds com,io,ai,studio --available-only --count 50

# Save survivors to a shortlist with optional notes and tags.
domain-goat-pp-cli lists add ai-startup kindred.ai lumen.ai novella.ai

# Rank by combined score/price/availability and promote the top 10 to a finalist sub-list.
domain-goat-pp-cli shortlist promote --list ai-startup --top 10 --by combined

# Side-by-side: scores, prices, RDAP status, drop flags.
domain-goat-pp-cli compare kindred.ai lumen.ai novella.ai --json

Unique Features

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

Local state that compounds

shortlist promote — Promote the top-N candidates from a list into a finalist sub-list ranked by combined score, price, and availability.

When an agent needs to converge on a buyable shortlist, this collapses 'fetch scores, fetch prices, fetch availability, sort, persist' into one deterministic call.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli shortlist promote --list ai-startup --top 10 --by combined --agent
```
budget — Filter candidates whose 5-year total cost (registration + 4 renewals) is under your ceiling, sorted ascending.

Avoid the $12-year-1 / $4,800-renewal trap before falling in love with a name.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli budget --list ai-startup --max-annual-cost 50 --years 5 --available-only
```
compare — One row per domain with score, length, TLD prestige, cross-registrar price, RDAP status, and drop flag.

Lets an agent or user finalize a shortlist in one command instead of cross-referencing 5 tabs.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli compare kindred.io kindred.ai kindred.studio --json --select status,price,score
```
why-killed — Show why a domain is no longer on the active shortlist: status, score, notes, tag history, last price.

Agency teams kill the same name twice in a sprint without this — and an agent re-suggesting a killed name burns user trust.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli why-killed kindred.studio --json
```
tld-affinity — Given a seed keyword, rank TLDs by suffix-semantics fit, historical availability rate in local history, and price tier.

Helps an agent pick generative TLDs before running expensive permutation passes.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli tld-affinity kindred --top 10 --json
```

Reachability + persistence

drops timeline — Time-axis view of every watched domain hitting pendingDelete/redemptionPeriod, filtered by brandability score and TLD.

Drop-catchers and brand investors want to know 'what's queued for next week that's worth bidding on?' This answers it.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli drops timeline --days 30 --min-score 7 --tld io,ai --agent
```
pricing-arbitrage — Rank TLDs by renewal-delta (year-1 trap risk) or by prestige-to-price ratio.

Helps users and agents avoid TLDs where year-2 pricing destroys the deal.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing-arbitrage --by renewal-delta --top 20 --agent
```
drop-bid-window — Compute the exact UTC re-release window for a domain in pendingDelete (RDAP event + 5-day grace).

Drop-catchers need minute-level timing; this replaces hand-parsed WHOIS regex.
```
domain-goat-pp-cli drop-bid-window expiring.io --json
```

Usage

Run domain-goat-pp-cli --help for the full command reference and flag list.

Commands

Availability & lookup

check — Check whether one or more domains are available (RDAP → WHOIS → DNS fallback).
rdap — RDAP lookup (RFC 7480-7484) via IANA bootstrap.
whois — WHOIS lookup (RFC 3912, TCP/43) with parsed output.
dns — DNS lookups (A/AAAA/NS/MX/SOA) — fast availability pre-filter.
cert — Inspect the TLS certificate for a domain.

Generate & score

gen — Offline generators (suggest, mix, affix, blend, hack, rhyme) that produce candidate names from seed words.
similar — Generate typosquat / similar-name variations (dnstwist-style).
score — Score a domain on brandability (length, syllables, dictionary, TLD prestige).
socials — Check whether a handle is taken on common social platforms.

Shortlists & comparison

lists — Manage candidate shortlists (saved domain sets with notes and tags).
shortlist — Promote and manage finalist shortlists from candidate lists.
compare — Side-by-side: score, length, TLD prestige, price, RDAP status, drop flag.
why-killed — Show why a domain is no longer on the active shortlist.
budget — Filter candidates by 5-year true cost (registration + N renewals).

Drops & watching

drops — Surface domains in their expiry / pendingDelete / redemption window.
drop-bid-window — Compute exact UTC re-release window for a domain in pendingDelete.
watch — Drop / expiry watch — periodically re-check domains and persist status.

Pricing & TLDs

pricing — Manage Porkbun TLD pricing snapshots (no auth required).
pricing-arbitrage — Rank TLDs by year-1-trap risk (renewal-delta) or prestige-to-price ratio.
tlds — Manage the local TLD table (IANA RDAP bootstrap + metadata).
tld-affinity — Rank TLDs by fit for a seed keyword (suffix-semantics + price tier + historical availability).
namecheap — Namecheap registrar adapter for live availability + pricing.

Sync & local data

sync — Sync API data to local SQLite for offline search and analysis.
import — Import data from a JSONL file via API create/upsert calls.

Agent & utility

doctor — Check CLI health (auth + connectivity).
agent-context — Emit structured JSON describing this CLI for agents.
api — Browse all API endpoints by interface name.
which — Find the command that implements a capability.
workflow — Compound workflows that combine multiple API operations.
profile — Save and apply named sets of flags.
feedback — Record feedback about this CLI.

Output Formats

# Human-readable table (default in terminal, JSON when piped)
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing show com

# JSON for scripting and agents
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing show com --json

# Filter to specific fields
domain-goat-pp-cli compare kindred.io kindred.ai --json --select status,price,score

# Dry run — show the request without sending
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing sync --dry-run

# Agent mode — JSON + compact + no prompts in one flag
domain-goat-pp-cli compare kindred.io kindred.ai --agent

Cookbook

Recipes that show why this CLI beats curl + whois + a spreadsheet.

# 1. One-shot health + offline-data warmup.
domain-goat-pp-cli doctor
domain-goat-pp-cli tlds sync
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing sync

# 2. Bulk availability across multiple TLDs (RDAP → WHOIS → DNS fallback).
domain-goat-pp-cli check kindred --tlds com,io,ai,studio,app --json

# 3. Read names from a file, attach price + score per result, agent-friendly.
domain-goat-pp-cli check --file names.txt --tlds com,io --include-price --include-score --agent

# 4. Generate 100 brandable variants from two seeds, available-only.
domain-goat-pp-cli gen suggest --seeds kindred,studio --tlds com,io,ai --available-only --count 100

# 5. Score a single domain on brandability (length, syllables, dictionary, TLD prestige).
domain-goat-pp-cli score kindred.ai --json

# 6. Build a shortlist with notes + tags, then dump it.
domain-goat-pp-cli lists create ai-startup
domain-goat-pp-cli lists add ai-startup kindred.io lumen.ai novella.ai --notes "founder favorites" --tags short,brandable
domain-goat-pp-cli lists show ai-startup --json

# 7. Promote the top-10 by combined score/price/availability into a finalists list.
domain-goat-pp-cli shortlist promote --list ai-startup --top 10 --by combined --dest ai-startup-finalists

# 8. Filter candidates by 5-year true cost — surface the year-2 renewal trap.
domain-goat-pp-cli budget --list ai-startup --years 5 --max-annual-cost 50 --available-only --top 20

# 9. Side-by-side comparison with selected fields.
domain-goat-pp-cli compare kindred.io kindred.ai kindred.studio --json --select status,price,score

# 10. Why is this domain no longer on the active list?
domain-goat-pp-cli why-killed kindred.studio --json

# 11. Rank TLDs by year-1-trap risk vs prestige-to-price ratio.
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing-arbitrage --by renewal-delta --top 20 --json
domain-goat-pp-cli pricing-arbitrage --by prestige-value --top 20 --json

# 12. Best-fit TLDs for a seed keyword (semantic + price + availability).
domain-goat-pp-cli tld-affinity kindred --top 10 --json

# 13. Drops timeline — what's worth bidding on this month?
domain-goat-pp-cli drops timeline --days 30 --min-score 7 --tld io,ai --agent

# 14. Exact UTC re-release window for a domain in pendingDelete.
domain-goat-pp-cli drop-bid-window expiring.io --json

# 15. Watch a set of domains over time and persist status changes.
domain-goat-pp-cli watch add kindred.io --cadence 12
domain-goat-pp-cli watch add kindred.ai --cadence 12
domain-goat-pp-cli watch run --json

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 id,name 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

domain-goat-pp-cli doctor

Verifies configuration and connectivity to the API.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/domain-goat-pp-cli/config.toml (override via DOMAIN_GOAT_CONFIG).

Static request headers can be configured under headers; per-command header overrides take precedence.

Environment variables:

DOMAIN_GOAT_CONFIG — path to an alternate config file.
DOMAIN_GOAT_BASE_URL — override the Porkbun API base URL (e.g., a self-hosted proxy).
DOMAIN_GOAT_FEEDBACK_ENDPOINT — upstream URL for feedback to send to when opted in.
DOMAIN_GOAT_FEEDBACK_AUTO_SEND — set to 1 / true to auto-send feedback without prompting.
NAMECHEAP_USERNAME (or legacy NAMECHEAP_API_USER) — Namecheap API user.
NAMECHEAP_API_KEY — Namecheap API key.
NAMECHEAP_CLIENT_IP — whitelisted client IP for the Namecheap API.
NAMECHEAP_SANDBOX — set to 1 / true to hit Namecheap's sandbox endpoint.
NO_COLOR — disable colored output (any non-empty value).

Troubleshooting

Not found errors (exit code 3)

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

API-specific

RDAP returns 5xx or no bootstrap entry for a ccTLD — domain-goat-pp-cli falls back to WHOIS port 43 automatically; verify with --source rdap vs --source whois.
Verisign WHOIS port 43 tarpitting your bulk run — pass --source rdap (RDAP at rdap.verisign.com is rate-limit safer for .com/.net) or lower concurrency with --parallel 2.
Namecheap returns 1011102 (invalid IP) — export NAMECHEAP_CLIENT_IP=<the IP whitelisted in your Namecheap API settings>; the IP that hits Namecheap must match what you registered exactly.

Sources & Inspiration

This CLI was built by studying these projects and resources:

dnstwist — Python (5500 stars)
likexian/whois — Go (700 stars)
whoiser — JavaScript (600 stars)
openrdap/rdap — Go (250 stars)
domainr-cli (archived) — Go (25 stars)
dorukardahan/domain-search-mcp — TypeScript
saidutt46/domain-check — TypeScript
bharathvaj-ganesan/whois-mcp — TypeScript

Generated by CLI Printing Press