cli-for-agents

cli-for-agents is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from OutlineDriven/odin-claude-plugin. It costs 44 tokens per session (906 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of cli-for-agents, Apache-2.0.

A design and review guide for command-line tools that coding agents will run. It focuses on flags, input and output behavior, exit codes, safe pipelines, and repeatable commands.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to plan a new CLI or review an existing one. It can examine subcommands, flags, positional arguments, standard input and output, errors, and exit codes.
Why use it?
It helps prevent agent-facing commands from being ambiguous, unsafe to repeat, or difficult to connect in automated workflows. It returns advice only and does not change the CLI.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Part of the odin-agent plugin — 46 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to plan a new CLI or review an existing one.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/outlinedriven/odin-claude-plugin/cli-for-agents
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 OutlineDriven/odin-claude-plugin --skill cli-for-agents
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/OutlineDriven/odin-claude-plugin

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install odin-agent, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 46 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-for-agents

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/outlinedriven/odin-claude-plugin/cli-for-agents.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/outlinedriven/odin-claude-plugin/cli-for-agents)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/outlinedriven/odin-claude-plugin/cli-for-agents"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/outlinedriven/odin-claude-plugin/cli-for-agents.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 44 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 906 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 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00044 $0.00906
Opus 5 $0.00022 $0.00453
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00181
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00091

Measured today against content hash dd3499cb4364, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cli-for-agents 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 today.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to cli-for-agents — 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.

plugins/odin-agent/skills/cli-for-agents/SKILL.md · 41 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 41 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLI for agents

Contract

Field Bound contract
Trigger Human asks to build or review a CLI intended for coding agents
Authority Read-only. No file, VCS, credential, paid, published, deployed, or remote mutation. Advice or review only.
Side effect Chat output only: design advice or review findings.
Done A report returned that prescribes flag-driven, pipeline-safe, idempotent CLI design.

Inputs

  • A CLI to review, or a build request describing the CLI's purpose and target agent runtime. Either is sufficient; both may be supplied.
  • Optional: existing command surface, flag set, exit-code map, or invocation examples. When absent, state the assumption and review against the design rules below.

Procedure

  1. Bound scope: confirm whether this is a build (propose a design) or a review (judge an existing CLI). Do not mutate the CLI or any file; produce advice only. Done when: build or review intent is confirmed and stated in the report.
  2. Enumerate the command surface the agent will invoke: subcommands, flags, positional args, stdin, stdout, stderr, and exit codes. Done when: the full surface is listed or the missing surface is named.
  3. Check flag-driven control: every behavioral switch is a flag or subcommand, not an interactive prompt that blocks on a TTY. Flag names are stable, long-form, and discoverable via --help. Reject hidden modes toggled only by interactive input. Done when: every switch is a flag or subcommand, or each violation is recorded.
  4. Check pipeline safety: output meant for machine consumption goes to stdout as plain, parseable text; human diagnostics go to stderr. The CLI never hangs waiting on a TTY when stdin is not a terminal. Exit codes are explicit and documented: 0 success, non-zero for distinct failure classes. Done when: stdout/stderr split and exit-code map are verified, or violations are recorded.
  5. Check idempotence: re-running the same invocation with the same inputs produces the same result and side effects, or fails loudly with a non-zero exit when the operation is not safely repeatable. Done when: each state-changing command declares idempotence or names what makes a repeat unsafe.
  6. Check agent ergonomics: deterministic output ordering, no color or progress decoration on stdout unless explicitly flagged on, machine-readable --json or equivalent where the agent parses output, and a single canonical invocation form per action. Done when: all four ergonomics rules pass or each violation is recorded.
  7. For a build request, propose the command surface, flag set, exit-code map, and stdout/stderr contract that satisfy rules 3-6. For a review, record each violation against the rule it breaks and prescribe the fix. Done when: the proposed surface or the per-violation fix list is complete.
  8. Stop at the report. Do not edit the CLI, run it, or widen scope into implementation, testing, or packaging. Done when: the report is returned and no file was mutated.

Read the full file on GitHub · 41 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. today Changed dd3499cb4364
  2. 2d ago First seen · 41 lines · 44 tokens per session scan A 6f9ac5b69a43

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-for-agents is a skill published in the GitHub repository OutlineDriven/odin-claude-plugin (35 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 44 tokens to every session and 906 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to cli-for-agents, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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