r-btw-cli using CRAN instead of local package help first

I'm using btw skills locally and I wish it would first reference local package documentation, instead of going directly to CRAN to find the package and look up documentation there. I'm not sure if it's the preferred way of working. It would make fewer requests to the CRAN and also it would be faster (I guess). Not sure what you think about this?

My overall goal is to allow users to access their internal packages and generate code based on them? I know CRAN results would be more up to date and also allow user to install these packages if needed, but sometimes you have only internal packages, that are not available in CRAN. Maybe the whole logic then needs to be adjusted

Also, I can always customize this skill locally and work with it, just wanted to see what's your opinion on that.

I'm using btw skills locally and I wish it would first reference local package documentation, instead of going directly to CRAN to find the package and look up documentation there. I'm not sure if it's the preferred way of working.

Can you give a small reproducible example of the way you're using btw? The help tools, e.g. btw_tool_docs_help(), use utils::help(), and returns the help pages from locally installed packages.

But also I'm not sure what you mean by "btw skills" because I'm not aware of an Agent Skill for btw.

I was thinking of this r-btw-cli skill inst/cli-skill/r-btw-cli/SKILL.md

I was thinking of this r-btw-cli skill inst/cli-skill/r-btw-cli/SKILL.md

Can you please clarify how that skill goes to CRAN and not local package installations?

Well I'll give you a clear example of how it works when I run it locally:

/r-btw-cli tell me something about some_package package   
                                                                                                                                                      
⏺ Bash(btw cran info some_package)                                                                                                            
  ⎿  Running…                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                      
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 Bash command                                                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                      
   btw cran info some_package                                                                                                                 
   Get CRAN metadata for some_package                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                                      
 Do you want to proceed?                                                                                                                              
 ❯ 1. Yes                                                                                                                                             
   2. Yes, and don't ask again for btw cran info commands in /Users/user_path
   3. No

I guess it's just a slight change in current SKILL.md file

Here:

btw/inst/cli-skill/r-btw-cli/SKILL.md

Line 39 in d929b5d

    
           Use `btw cran` to search for packages or look up metadata for a known package on CRAN.

it might say: Use this if you haven't checked local package using btw docs or something like that.

or maybe it's desired behavior? I mean I can always set this skill to behave like I want it to, I just thought for people in general it would be faster/nicer to have it first look at local library (especially if some packages are not available in CRAN)

Are you literally asking "tell me something about some_package package" or is that meant as a placeholder for a more detailed question? Perhaps you could show me a real example or transcript.

some_package is a placeholder for any package name. This is a real example, I just excluded a package name. It can be dplyr, ggplot2, etc.

I know it doesn't sound too smart, but I'm not using it for myself, I'm building skills and apps for company users who might have that same exact question, especially when they start using a new internal package.

Also, that is not the only case in which this thing happened. I will pay more attention when I'm using it in my everyday work, because I also noticed this pattern when I'm developing something, I tell Claude to use for example vcr package and in order for it to fill it's own context of how to use it it goes on CRAN and starts downloading the documentation from there. Working in sandbox environments is also one of the situations in which I don't want Claude even to try it.

I mean, I just wrote this issue because I thought maybe that's not the desired behavior for some people.

I've just updated part of it like this:

(Do not use this if you have found package locally using `btw docs`) Use `btw cran` to search for packages or look up metadata for a known package on CRAN.

@vladimirobucina

Thanks @vladimirobucina -- I just updated the language in the skill to give better guidance around btw cran and btw docs that should hopefully reduce the confusion

thank you, I really appreciate the effort, sorry if this was a bit of a strange request, I'm using all these posit products a lot and trying to figure it out myself :)

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r-btw-cli using CRAN instead of local package help first #189

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r-btw-cli using CRAN instead of local package help first #189

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gadenbuie commented on May 1, 2026

vladimirobucina commented on May 1, 2026

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vladimirobucina commented on May 11, 2026

vladimirobucina commented on May 11, 2026

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vladimirobucina commented on May 12, 2026

gadenbuie commented on May 12, 2026

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