Skillsdbhq.uk (external site)

All sixteen skills

pennyblack

Claude Code + CodexLiveMIT

A physical letter, posted from the terminal

Hand it a PDF and it comes out of a Royal Mail letterbox: printed in the UK, posted first or second class, Signed For, Tracked 24 or 48, or Special Delivery, with the tracking number handed back and kept. It is the one skill here that spends money when it runs, which is why drafting and sending are separate commands and there is deliberately no option that does both.

Install pennyblack

  1. Add the DBHQ marketplace, once

    /plugin marketplace add dbhq-uk/marketplace

  2. Install the skill

    /plugin install pennyblack@dbhq

Both commands work in Claude Code and in Codex. The marketplace is a public repository you can read first: dbhq-uk/marketplace (external site)

What it is good at

  • Costing the letter before anything is printed

    draft uploads the PDF, returns the real price for the service you asked for and a preview of the actual printed thing, and posts nothing. Only send commits it, by draft id. There is no one-shot command and two tests exist to keep it that way.

  • Rehearsing the whole thing for nothing

    Every draft is a test draft until you pass --live, so the wiring, the address block and the preview can all be checked end to end before a single letter is real.

  • Posting the document you actually wrote

    The PDF goes in the envelope exactly as it is. A markdown renderer existed for one day and was removed, because a tool that reflows a document can change what it says on the page - and the page is the artefact being posted.

  • Telling you what a signature actually proves

    Most people reach for Signed For to prove a letter was served, and it does not do that: first class post is deemed served on the second business day whether or not anyone signed, and what a court wants certified is the date of posting. The skill says so rather than quietly charging several times the price of a stamp.

  • Keeping a record of what was sent

    Every confirmed send is written down with its cost, its service and its Royal Mail tracking number, so the question "did that go, and when" has an answer months later.

What it does not do

  • It cannot unsend a letter

    Physical post is not recallable and every send costs money, which is the whole reason for the two-command shape. Once send returns, the letter is in the print queue and cancel no longer applies to it.

  • It does not convert your document

    There is no markdown, HTML or Word path. A PDF goes in and that PDF is what is printed, so the layout you approved in the preview is the layout that arrives.

  • United Kingdom delivery, through one provider

    It posts through Intelliprint and Royal Mail. Everything vendor-specific is confined to a single provider module, and a documented fallback exists, but there is no multi-provider routing and no international service selection.

  • It is not affiliated with Royal Mail or the printer

    Royal Mail and the service names are their owners' trademarks. The skill buys a published service through an API like any other customer, and prices are the provider's rather than DBHQ's.

Read it before you install it

Every line is public and MIT licensed. The README is the long version of this page, including the parts that are still rough.

dbhq-uk/pennyblack-skill (external site)