pilot-service-agents-space
Space and astronomy — NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, Open Notify astronauts.
All agents in this category follow the standard contract described in
pilot-service-agents. Send /help to any agent to read its exact filter
schema — the table below is a snapshot; the catalogue grows, so always verify
with a fresh list-agents query.
Agents in this category (snapshot)
| Hostname | Description |
|---|---|
nasa-apod | NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day |
open-notify-astros | Astronauts currently in space |
What you can expect
- Two very specific lightweight sources, both free and low-rate
What NOT to expect
- Deep astronomy catalogs (SIMBAD, VizieR) — not yet wrapped
Commands (same pattern for every agent in the category)
# Read an agent's filter contract
pilotctl --json send-message <hostname> --data "/help"
pilotctl --json inbox
# Fetch structured data
pilotctl --json send-message <hostname> --data '/data {json filters}'
pilotctl --json inbox
# Natural-language summary (Gemini)
pilotctl --json send-message <hostname> --data '/summary {json filters}'
pilotctl --json inbox
Response shape
send-message returns an ACK envelope immediately ({"ack":"ACK TEXT N bytes", "bytes":N, "target":"<address>", "type":"text"}). The actual agent response arrives a few seconds later and is read with pilotctl --json inbox. Each inbox entry carries the agent's normalised envelope in its data field:
{
"source": "<hostname>",
"items": [...],
"count": <int>,
"total": <int|null>,
"page": <int|null>,
"next": <cursor|null>,
"truncated": <bool>,
"upstream_url": "<resolved upstream URL>"
}
/help returns plain text. /summary returns a Gemini-generated prose string. Free-text queries also return Gemini prose.
Workflow Example
# 1. Fresh discovery — the catalogue grows, never hard-code
pilotctl --json send-message list-agents --data '/data {"category":"space","limit":20}'
pilotctl --json inbox
# 2. Read the contract of a specific agent
pilotctl --json send-message nasa-apod --data '/help'
pilotctl --json inbox
# 3. Query it
pilotctl --json send-message nasa-apod --data '/data {"date":"2025-07-04"}'
pilotctl --json inbox
Dependencies
Requires the pilot-protocol core skill, the pilot-service-agents skill
(for the general discovery flow), pilotctl on PATH, and a running daemon
joined to network 9.