Curviate: connections and following

An invitation is the most consequential low-effort write on LinkedIn: it is visible, it is attributable, and a withdrawn one still leaves a trace. Preview first, de-duplicate before sending.

Command surface established against CLI 0.33.0.

Before any command

npm install -g @curviate/cli && curviate --version    # needs Node 18 or newer
curviate login --api-key <key>                        # or export CURVIATE_API_KEY
curviate account list --json                          # the acc_id for --account

• Credentials resolve flag > environment > stored profile (CURVIATE_API_KEY, CURVIATE_BASE_URL, CURVIATE_ACCOUNT).
• --profile <name> picks the stored credential set; --account <acc_id> picks which connected LinkedIn account sends the invitation. Name it explicitly on every write: an invitation from the wrong account reaches a real person as that person.
• --preview before every write. It renders the resolved request (recipient, note, acting account) without sending. On a read command it is refused with exit 2.
• --json on anything you parse; --fields a,b,c to project; --verbose when a slim response looks suspiciously empty.
• Put global flags at the end of the command.
• Branch on the exit code, never on prose. See the table at the end.
• These are not retrieval-mode commands: --mode/--max-age are refused here with unknown flag, exit 2 (see curviate-profile for the four commands that do accept them).

connect: invitations

Command	What it does	Confidence
curviate connect <id> --note "<text>"	Send a connection request. <id> is a slug, profile URL or member id. --note is capped at 300 characters by LinkedIn; omit it for a generic request.	proven
curviate connect sent	Pending sent invitations only: accepted and declined ones are never returned, so this is a lower bound on what you sent. Use id with connect cancel; user.id identifies the recipient (the sent variant carries no public slug). created_at is the platform's own timestamp. There is no total count; use --all and count client-side.	proven
curviate connect received	Pending received invitations only. user.public_identifier, display_name, first_name, last_name identify the sender. Use id with accept or decline.	proven
curviate connect cancel <id>	Withdraw a sent invitation. <id> is the id from connect sent.	proven
curviate connect accept <id>	Accept a received invitation. <id> is the id from connect received.	wired, never live-fired
curviate connect decline <id>	Decline a received invitation.	wired, never live-fired

connect accept and connect decline are preview-proven (--preview renders the correct call and body), but have never been fired against a live account. They are real, correctly wired commands. Run your own smoke test on an invitation you are prepared to act on before an unattended flow depends on either.

Traps

• De-duplicate before sending. A request against a pair already mid-flow or already connected returns CONNECTION_REQUEST_CONFLICT, exit 8. That is a clean, routine signal and the only reliable de-duplication marker for a connect loop, but check profile relations and connect sent --all first rather than probing with real invitations.
• Invitations take roughly 10 to 30 seconds to appear on the recipient's side, and a very recent one can take minutes to appear in connect sent (LinkedIn-side indexing). An absence right after sending is not proof the send failed. Do not resend on that basis.
• --note takes a string, not stdin. Write the note to a file, confirm it is non-empty, and pass --note "$(cat note.txt)". An empty note has gone out as a blank request.
• There is no idempotency key and no server-side de-duplication. A send that times out may already have landed; re-read connect sent before re-issuing.

Following and connections

Command	What it does	Confidence
curviate profile relations	Your first-degree connections.	proven
curviate profile followers <id|me>	A member's followers. me is always safe; another member's id also works.	proven
curviate profile following <id|me>	Who a member follows. Self-only in practice, see below.	proven
curviate profile follow <id>	Follow a member. Sends a connection request instead if their profile is private. Bodyless write; resolves a slug or URL to the member id for you.	proven
curviate profile unfollow <id>	Unfollow. Idempotent.	proven

• profile following is self-only. Pass me. Any other member id (including your own explicit member id) returns LINKEDIN_OPERATION_NOT_SUPPORTED, exit 8. That is a permanent platform limitation, never retryable. profile followers does not share it.
• Never write profile me relations. The command is profile relations. Older builds silently discarded relations and answered with your own profile at exit 0; current builds exit 2.
• Following is the low-consequence alternative to an invitation: it needs no acceptance, is reversible, and still surfaces the member's posts in your feed.

A connect loop that behaves

# 1. Confirm you are not already connected or already mid-flow.
curviate profile relations --all --json          # first-degree
curviate connect sent --all --json               # pending invitations

# 2. Preview the exact request, then send it.
curviate connect <slug> --note "$(cat note.txt)" --account <acc_id> --preview --json
curviate connect <slug> --note "$(cat note.txt)" --account <acc_id> --json

On exit 8 with CONNECTION_REQUEST_CONFLICT, record the pair as already handled and move on. On exit 13, stop the loop; see below.

Full command surface

Read from the CLI's own --help at version 0.33.0. Descriptions, traps and confidence tags elsewhere in this skill are hand-written and carry the version they were established against.

Every command below that takes flags at all also accepts --account, --api-key, --base-url, --beta, --json, --preview, --profile, --timeout, --verbose.

Command	Arguments	Flags
curviate profile relations	(none)	--fields, --limit, --cursor, --all, --max-pages, --page-delay
curviate profile follow	ID	--fields
curviate profile unfollow	ID	--fields
curviate profile followers	ID	--fields, --limit, --cursor, --all, --max-pages, --page-delay
curviate profile following	ID	--fields, --limit, --cursor, --all, --max-pages, --page-delay
curviate connect	ID	--note
curviate connect sent	(none)	--fields, --limit, --cursor, --all, --max-pages, --page-delay
curviate connect received	(none)	--fields, --limit, --cursor, --all, --max-pages, --page-delay
curviate connect accept	ID	(none)
curviate connect decline	ID	(none)
curviate connect cancel	ID	(none)

Exit codes to branch on here

Code	Meaning	What to do
1	INTERNAL from the server itself: a genuine bug on the platform side.	Worth one retry; if it repeats it is a bug to report, not a state to work around.
2	Usage or invalid input, often raised before any network call.	Fix the invocation. Never retry unchanged.
4	Not found: a wrong member or invitation identifier.	Re-resolve the id.
5	Three causes, one code: read error.code. NO_ACTIVE_SEAT: the account is on no active seat. LINKEDIN_FEATURE_NOT_SUBSCRIBED: LinkedIn itself lacks the feature. BETA_NOT_ENABLED: the operation is beta-gated and this workspace has not opted in.	Branch on error.code: the three fixes have nothing in common, and none is fixed by retrying unchanged.
6	PLATFORM_RATE_LIMIT and its siblings. Carries retry_after in whole seconds. A response naming budgetRow means only that row is paused; every other row on the account keeps working.	Back off and retry after that many seconds. On a named budgetRow, switch to other work on the account rather than backing off across the board.
7	Transient platform fault: a request that got no response at all (network error, DNS failure, timeout) or one that came back as something other than a valid API answer. Carries retryLikelyToSucceed: true.	Retry with backoff.
8	Account or connection state. Read error.code: CONNECTION_REQUEST_CONFLICT is routine de-duplication; LINKEDIN_OPERATION_NOT_SUPPORTED is permanent; ACCOUNT_RESTRICTED, LINKEDIN_AUTH_FAILED and LINKEDIN_COOKIE_INVALID need a reconnect.	Depends entirely on error.code; never treat the whole bucket as "reconnect the account".
13	BUDGET_EXHAUSTED: a safety rule of your own refused the invitation, not LinkedIn. Read error.safetyReason: ceiling means the row named in error.budgetRow hit its configured limit; activity_window means the account is outside the hours it works in (no budgetRow on that one). Nothing reached LinkedIn and nothing was spent; no invitation went out. reset_at can be weeks out, and is null for allowances no clock frees (pending invitations, for instance, are freed by acceptances and withdrawals rather than by time).	Do not back off and retry. error.safetyHint.parameter names the exact setting to change. Read quotas[] via curviate account get <acc_id> --json, then wait for the named reset, withdraw stale invitations, or change that setting. A retry loop only burns time.