cli-development-guidelines

What problem does it solve?

Provides a practical methodology and toolset to design, review, and audit command-line interfaces so they are discoverable, safe, and composable in Unix pipelines.

Core Features & Use Cases

• CLI contract and patterns: Clear rules for exit codes, stdout/stderr separation, help structure, color handling, and interactivity that make CLIs reliable for humans and automation.
• Templates and examples: JSON spec templates, help text skeletons, and error message patterns to speed implementation and documentation.
• Automated auditing: A Python audit script that runs heuristic checks against a CLI to surface help, flag, and ANSI/color issues useful for CI gating and design reviews.
• Use case: Use the skill to design a new tool with a stable --json output mode, or to audit an existing CLI before release to ensure scripting friendliness and safe defaults.

Quick Start

Run the included audit by asking the agent to execute the Python audit script on your CLI (for example, run python scripts/cli_audit.py -- ./mycli).