https://docs.meltano.com/guide/troubleshooting/#dumping-catalog

meltano invoke <EXTRACTOR_NAME> --dump=catalog

is suggested but

meltano invoke --dump=catalog <EXTRACTOR_NAME>

was what eventually worked. This was on meltano3.6.0

https://github.com/meltano/meltano/pull/9634 , thanks ai 😄