CLI Overview

Architecture

src/index.ts                     CLI entry (commander), registers all commands
src/commands/                    One file per subcommand
src/linkedin/auth/
  playwright-auth.ts             Headed Chromium login, captures cookies
src/linkedin/api/
  client.ts                      Axios client with LinkedIn headers + cookie management
  cookies.ts                     Cookie jar loading, CSRF token extraction
  session.ts                     Session loading
  endpoints/
    conversations.ts             List conversations, find by recipient
    messages.ts                  Fetch messages, send messages
    profiles.ts                  Resolve profile slug and URN
src/linkedin/realtime/
  sse-client.ts                  SSE stream with reconnect + heartbeat
src/store/
  index.ts                       Store class (init, git, accounts, conversations)
  conversations.ts               RECORD.json, JSONL messages, symlinks
  git.ts                         Debounced git auto-commit
  search.ts                      Fuzzy name search with confidence scoring
src/utils/
  rate-limiter.ts                Per-account message rate limiter
  slug.ts                        Extract slug from LinkedIn URL

Global flags

All commands accept these flags:

Flag	Description
-a, --account <slug>	Account to use (default: $ALLMAN_ACCOUNT, or the only account)
-s, --store <path>	Store directory (default: $ALLMAN_STORE, or ./.allman)
--json	Machine-readable JSON output to stdout
--debug	Verbose debug output to stderr

Key concepts

Slug resolution

Slugs are LinkedIn publicIdentifier values (e.g. jamie-rivera from linkedin.com/in/jamie-rivera). They are always fetched from the LinkedIn profile API, never guessed from names.

Resolved slugs are cached in RECORD.json and enable O(1) lookups via filesystem symlinks.

Rate limiting

Outbound messages are rate-limited per account. Default: 3000ms minimum between sends. State is persisted to rate-state.json across process restarts.

Pre-send safety

Before sending, allman send fetches the 10 most recent messages. If new inbound messages arrived since your last reply, the send is aborted and the new messages are shown. This prevents sending without context.

stdout vs stderr

allman listen writes NDJSON events to stdout. All informational output, warnings, errors, and debug messages go to stderr. This separation is intentional — agents and pipes read stdout without log noise.