What is 21st-cli-use?

A command-line tool for finding, viewing, installing, and generating React and shadcn UI components, themes, and templates from the 21st.dev catalogue.

Use it to search the catalogue, preview component code or theme CSS, install items into a project, or generate a new component with 21st AI.

It helps you reuse existing interface code instead of searching for components manually or writing every piece of UI from scratch. It also shows when code retrieval or AI generation uses your quota.

21st-cli-use — Skill by 21st-dev

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/21st-dev/skill/21st-cli-use

Any agent

npx skills add 21st-dev/skill --skill 21st-cli-use

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/21st-dev/skill

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 160 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,203 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.

Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00160	$0.01203
Opus 5	$0.00080	$0.00602
Sonnet 5	$0.00032	$0.00241
Haiku 4.5	$0.00016	$0.00120

Measured yesterday against content hash c888765e0640, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

21st-cli-use scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

Prints each logo's name and SVG url(s) to curl straight into a project. Uses the

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to 21st-cli-use — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/21st-cli-use/SKILL.md · 122 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 122 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

21st CLI — find, install & generate from the terminal

The 21st CLI (npx @21st-dev/cli, bin 21st) is the command-line surface for the 21st.dev catalog. Search first, install what fits, and only hand-write UI when nothing matches. To publish your own components/themes/templates, use the 21st-registry skill; to publish a project's design as a theme, use 21st-design-sync.

Auth (do this once)

Two interchangeable credentials, both sent as the API key:

Login session — npx @21st-dev/cli login opens the browser and saves a token to ~/.config/21st/auth.json. Best for interactive/dev machines.
API key — 21st_sk_… from https://21st.dev/mcp (or https://21st.dev/settings/api-keys). Pass via --api-key <key> or the TWENTYFIRST_TOKEN / API_KEY_21ST env var. Best for CI.

21st whoami shows the signed-in account; 21st usage shows tier + remaining free quota; 21st logout clears the saved login.

Metering

Metadata (search, previews, a theme's CSS) is free. Retrieving component code (21st get, install) and AI generation are metered per user: a small free daily quota, then a paywall (21st usage shows what's left). Community access / membership lifts the quota.

Find

# Search everything (components + themes + templates)
21st search "pricing table" --limit 10
21st search button --type c        # components only (c | theme | template)
21st search dark --type theme
# Filters: --tag <slug> --color <bucket> --sort <s> --free|--paid
#          --author <username> --mine --liked   --json for machine output

Always search before hand-writing a component — a close match is usually faster to install and adapt than to build from scratch.

Logos

21st logo discord            # search brand + UI SVG logos (free, no login)
21st logo "next js" --limit 5 --json

Prints each logo's name and SVG url(s) to curl straight into a project. Uses the open svgl.app library; free and unmetered on every plan.

Read the full file on GitHub · 122 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

yesterday First seen · 122 lines · 160 tokens per session scan A c888765e0640

Subscribe to this mod's changes

21st-cli-use is a skill published in the GitHub repository 21st-dev/skill (2 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 160 tokens to every session and 1,203 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). It is 100% identical to 21st-cli-use, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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