Skill

seats-aero

Seats.aero Partner API for award travel availability, cached search, route lists, and trip revalidation details.

Verified: 2026-05-13 (printing-press-ingest-2026-05-13+enrich-capability-skill)

When to use seats-aero

Choose if

You're inside an agent loop planning award travel and need cached miles-redemption availability across multiple frequent-flyer programs from one CLI, with typed exit codes and a Partner API path that doesn't require parsing airline portals. Pick this over scraping airline websites when freshness lag and read-only scope are acceptable.

Avoid if

You need to actually book, hold, or modify award reservations — the CLI is strictly read-only. Also avoid if you don't have a Seats.aero Partner API subscription, or if you need real-time airline inventory (the upstream is a cached scrape and can disagree with bookable inventory at the moment of query).

Risk Flags

  • MEDIUM auth Requires a Seats.aero Partner API key. Agents without the key get exit code 4 immediately and cannot reach any cached-availability endpoint.
  • MEDIUM rate_limit Upstream Partner API enforces rate limits; exit code 7 surfaces hits. Concrete thresholds are not disclosed in the README.
  • LOW scope Read-only by default — does not create, update, delete, publish, send, or mutate remote resources. Agents needing to book or hold award seats must use the airline portal directly.
  • LOW data_quality Award availability is a cache of third-party scraping; freshness lags real airline inventory and can disagree with what's bookable at the moment of search.

Cost

Type: Unknown · Free tier: The CLI is free to install. All endpoints require a Seats.aero Partner API key set via env var.

Hidden costs

  • Seats.aero Partner API access is a paid upstream subscription; the CLI wraps it but tier pricing is not disclosed in the README.

Install

Default

npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press install seats-aero
# Required: Seats.aero Partner API key
export SEATSAERO_API_KEY=<your-key>

Setup docs →

Estimated time to first success: ~10 min

Dependencies

Minimum runtime: Node.js (npx) or Go 1.26.3+; Claude Desktop 1.0.0+ for MCPB bundle

Distribution

Repository
https://github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library
License
MIT