cli-design

cli-design is a skill for Claude Code from bengous/claude-code-plugins. It costs 52 tokens per session (1,568 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of guidance for building command-line tools that are clear, considerate, and compatible with common terminal conventions. It covers interaction design, errors, and how commands work with other tools.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when building a command-line tool, script, or terminal application.
Why use it?
It helps avoid confusing commands, poor error messages, and interfaces that are difficult to use from a terminal or script.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the software-craft plugin — 5 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when building a command-line tool, script, or terminal application.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design
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.

Any agent
npx skills add bengous/claude-code-plugins --skill cli-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bengous/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install software-craft, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cli-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for cli-design

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bengous/claude-code-plugins/cli-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 52 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,568 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00052 $0.01568
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00784
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00314
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00157

Measured 9d ago against content hash 7fe5ee238e0f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cli-design scanned grade A with 0 findings 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 9d ago.

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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

software-craft/skills/cli-design/SKILL.md · 172 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 172 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

This skill guides creation of command-line interfaces that respect users' time and intelligence. Implement real working CLIs with exceptional attention to ergonomics, error handling, and composability.

The user provides CLI requirements: a tool, script, or terminal application to build. They may include context about the purpose, target users, or technical constraints.

<cli_design_thinking>

Design Thinking

Before coding, understand the context and commit to a clear interaction model:

  • Purpose: What task does this tool accomplish? How often will users run it?
  • Users: Power users who'll alias it? Occasional users who'll forget flags? Scripts and automation?
  • Scope: Single-purpose tool or multi-command suite? Pipes and composition or standalone?
  • Personality: Minimal and silent? Friendly and helpful? Technical and precise?

CLIs are conversations. Every invocation is a turn in a dialogue. Design for the user who runs your command wrong the first time—that's the normal case.

Then implement working code that is:

  • Production-grade and robust to unexpected input
  • Respectful of platform conventions (POSIX, GNU, XDG)
  • Helpful when things go wrong
  • Composable with pipes, scripts, and other tools </cli_design_thinking>

<cli_ux_guidelines>

CLI UX Guidelines

Progressive Disclosure

Simple by default, power available. The 90% use case should require zero flags. Advanced options exist but don't clutter basic usage.

<example_good title="Progressive help">

Basic usage shows essentials

$ mytool --help Usage: mytool

Process files efficiently.

Options: -o, --output Output location (default: stdout) -h, --help Show this help

Run 'mytool --help-all' for advanced options. </example_good>

Error Messages

Errors are teaching moments. Tell users what went wrong, why, and how to fix it.

<example_bad title="Hostile error"> $ mytool config.yaml Error: invalid input </example_bad>

<example_good title="Helpful error"> $ mytool config.yaml Error: Cannot read 'config.yaml': file not found

Read the full file on GitHub · 172 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.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 172 lines · 52 tokens per session scan A 7fe5ee238e0f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository bengous/claude-code-plugins (4 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 52 tokens to every session and 1,568 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

live-canvas

Conduct design interviews, generate UI variations, and collect live click-to-annotate feedback that streams into the session so edits land without leaving the browser. Use when the user wants rapid iterative UI refinement, not just batched feedback.

hamr0/agentic-toolkit · 50 tokens

artifacts-builder

Suite of tools for creating elaborate, multi-component claude.ai HTML artifacts using modern frontend web technologies (React, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui). Use for complex artifacts requiring state management, routing, or shadcn/ui components - not for simple single-file HTML/JSX artifacts.

hamr0/agentic-toolkit · 63 tokens

canvas-design

Create beautiful visual art in .png and .pdf documents using design philosophy. You should use this skill when the user asks to create a poster, piece of art, design, or other static piece. Create original visual designs, never copying existing artists' work to avoid copyright violations.

hamr0/agentic-toolkit · 59 tokens

theme-factory

Toolkit for styling artifacts with a theme. These artifacts can be slides, docs, reportings, HTML landing pages, etc. There are 10 pre-set themes with colors/fonts that you can apply to any artifact that has been creating, or can generate a new theme on-the-fly.

hamr0/agentic-toolkit · 62 tokens

brand-guidelines

Applies Anthropic's official brand colors and typography to any sort of artifact that may benefit from having Anthropic's look-and-feel. Use it when brand colors or style guidelines, visual formatting, or company design standards apply.

hamr0/agentic-toolkit · 50 tokens

taiyi-ui-design

A design-planning guide for describing how an application's user interface should look and behave. It produces a UI-DESIGN.md document covering layouts, components, interactions, accessibility, and error states.

Dong90/oh-my-taiyiforge · 35 tokens