Curviate: start here

Curviate is a LinkedIn API for agents. The curviate CLI is its command surface, and this skill is the dispatcher: it says which skill to read, and carries the few rules that apply everywhere. It carries no command syntax: every command, flag and worked example lives in the area skill that owns it.

Established against CLI 0.33.0.

Which skill answers this

Task	Skill
First run on a new machine: install, authenticate, connect an account, prove it works.	curviate-quickstart
A member profile or a company page. Resolving a human search term into the filter id a search needs. Sessions, stored profiles and connected accounts.	curviate-profile
Finding people, companies, posts, jobs, services or groups. Running a pasted LinkedIn search URL.	curviate-search
Reading conversations, sending and managing messages, InMail, company-page inboxes.	curviate-inbox
Publishing posts, commenting, reacting, the home feed, notifications.	curviate-engage
Connection invitations, follows, relations, followers.	curviate-network
Job postings: creating, publishing, budgets, applicants.	curviate-jobs
Sales Navigator and Recruiter.	curviate-premium

When a task spans two areas (find someone, then message them), read both. They are self-sufficient and repeat what they need to; nothing is hidden behind a third skill.

Resolve the binary before anything else

curviate --version    # needs Node 18 or newer

If that fails, install it: npm install -g @curviate/cli. Do not substitute a raw HTTP call for a command you could not find. The command surface is the contract, and hand-rolled requests miss the projections, the retry contract and the exit-code mapping that every one of these skills is written against.

Credentials resolve flag > environment > stored profile. For a scripted run prefer CURVIATE_API_KEY in the environment or a stored profile: a key passed as a flag is visible to other processes through ps and is saved in shell history.

Branch on the exit code, never on the message text

Every command exits with a code that says what to do next, and under --json an error prints {"error": {"code", "message", …}}. The code is the contract. The wording is not: it is written for a human reading a terminal and it changes between releases.

Two consequences worth internalising before the first failure:

• A single exit code can carry several distinct causes, so read error.code before deciding on a remedy. Exit 5 alone means three unrelated things whose fixes have nothing in common.
• Retrying is right for some codes and actively wrong for others. A rate limit tells you how long to wait; a refusal by one of your own ceilings will not clear on a retry at all. Each area skill ends with the exit codes reachable from its commands and the action each implies. Read that table rather than guessing from the message.

Retrieval mode, and the flag of the same name that is not it

Some reads can be answered from a stored copy instead of a live call to LinkedIn, and --mode / --max-age choose between them. Two rules matter everywhere:

• Exactly four commands accept those flags: profile me, profile <id>, inbox get and inbox messages. The mechanics (what each mode does, what a store miss returns, and why cache_only and --max-age cannot be combined) are in curviate-profile and curviate-inbox.
• Every other command refuses them outright rather than ignoring them: unknown flag `--mode` at exit 2, before any network call. That is the good failure. A retrieval-mode habit carried onto a search fails loudly instead of quietly serving you a freshness you did not ask for. The two exceptions below are not retrieval commands either: they refuse retrieval values.

Two commands take a --mode that is a different flag wearing the same name, and both spend real money: job publish and recruiter job publish, each --mode FREE|PROMOTED|PROMOTED_PLUS. They select how a posting is published. No retrieval value is valid there, and on both the flag is required rather than optional, so a retrieval habit is refused at exit 2 rather than silently promoting a posting. See curviate-jobs and curviate-premium.

Reading a response

• Pass --json on anything you parse. It is already the default when stdout is not a terminal; ask for it explicitly when a human might also be watching.
• An empty field in a default response is not proof the data does not exist. Responses are projected, and several fields are withheld until --verbose asks for them, including a few that read exactly like "this member published nothing". Each area skill names its own.
• --preview before a write renders the resolved request without sending it. On a read command it is refused at exit 2.