cli-builder

cli-builder is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from magnus919/agent-skills. It costs 88 tokens per session (1,114 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for building command-line tools that coding agents can call reliably. It covers predictable flags, structured JSON results, exit codes, and dry-run previews.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create or improve agent-facing scripts, add flags such as --json or --dry-run, and design clear command and error contracts.
Why use it?
It removes problems caused by interactive prompts, unclear errors, inconsistent output, and commands that behave differently when run repeatedly.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to create or improve agent-facing scripts, add flags such as…

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/magnus919/agent-skills/cli-builder
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 magnus919/agent-skills --skill cli-builder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin cli-builder/plugin install cli-builder after adding the marketplace above.

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-builder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/cli-builder.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/cli-builder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/cli-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/magnus919/agent-skills/cli-builder.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 88 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,114 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 $0.00088 $0.01114
Opus 5 $0.00044 $0.00557
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00223
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00111

Measured 3d ago against content hash 04b8f8f832c0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cli-builder 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 3d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (templates/bash-cli-scaffold.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

cli-builder/SKILL.md · 104 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 104 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLI Builder

Treat a CLI as a contract between the tool and the agent. The contract includes command names, --help, flags, output schemas, exit codes, stderr, and previews. Keep this file as the workflow; load the linked references only when their specialized guidance is needed.

When to Use

  • Build a new CLI that an agent will discover and call.
  • Refactor prompts, ambiguous commands, parser-hostile output, or false success codes.
  • Add or review --json, --dry-run, --yes, idempotency, or lazy authentication.

One Workflow

1. Discover the real contract

Define one CLI per service (except services sharing vendor authentication). Inspect real non-health read endpoints before coding, verify the actual authentication header and response shape, and capture the command tree and failure cases. Do not invent flags from API documentation alone. For HTTP clients, read the Python API client pattern.

Choose Bash for local wrappers and filesystem pipelines. Choose Python for HTTP, JSON, authentication state, or three-level command trees.

2. Build a predictable surface

Use one consistent verb/resource convention. Every command should be non-interactive and flag-driven, reject unknown flags, and provide useful subcommand help with concrete examples. Make normal output human-readable, but support --json with a stable curated schema, normalized types, deterministic ordering, and no other stdout. Send diagnostics to stderr with truthful non-zero exit codes.

For any state change, implement --dry-run before data-fetching or mutation, and require an explicit --yes/--force gate for destructive work. Guard creation, updates, and deletion so reruns are safe. Authentication must be lazy: --help and safe dry-runs work without credentials.

Use the advanced patterns for chained dry-runs, third-party JSON, version-dependent behavior, and text matching. Use the Bash scaffold when a local shell wrapper is the right fit.

Read the full file on GitHub · 104 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. 3d ago Changed · -396 lines · +20 tokens per session 04b8f8f832c0
  2. 7d ago First seen · 500 lines · 68 tokens per session scan A b2f426a0a09d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-builder is a skill published in the GitHub repository magnus919/agent-skills (70 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 88 tokens to every session and 1,114 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

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