create-cli

A guide for designing command-line tools: the programs developers run in a terminal. It covers commands, inputs, outputs, errors, configuration, and safe preview modes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to define command names, arguments, flags, help text, output formats, exit codes, configuration rules, prompts, and dry-run behavior.
Why use it?
It helps settle how a terminal tool should behave before it is built, so people and scripts can use it consistently.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/sublimecoder/aios/create-cli
Any agent
npx skills add sublimecoder/aios --skill create-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sublimecoder/aios

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 856 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 97% 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 $0.00022 $0.00856
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.00428
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00171
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00086

Measured yesterday against content hash df9961ac49a0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

create-cli 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 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.

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

97% identical to create-cli — 2 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/create-cli/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Create CLI

Design CLI surface area (syntax + behavior), human-first, script-friendly.

Do This First

Clarify (fast)

Ask, then proceed with best-guess defaults if user is unsure:

  • Command name + one-sentence purpose.
  • Primary user: humans, scripts, or both.
  • Input sources: args vs stdin; files vs URLs; secrets (never via flags).
  • Output contract: human text, --json, --plain, exit codes.
  • Interactivity: prompts allowed? need --no-input? confirmations for destructive ops?
  • Config model: flags/env/config-file; precedence; XDG vs repo-local.
  • Platform/runtime constraints: macOS/Linux/Windows; single binary vs runtime.

Deliverables (what to output)

When designing a CLI, produce a compact spec the user can implement:

  • Command tree + USAGE synopsis.
  • Args/flags table (types, defaults, required/optional, examples).
  • Subcommand semantics (what each does; idempotence; state changes).
  • Output rules: stdout vs stderr; TTY detection; --json/--plain; --quiet/--verbose.
  • Error + exit code map (top failure modes).
  • Safety rules: --dry-run, confirmations, --force, --no-input.
  • Config/env rules + precedence (flags > env > project config > user config > system).
  • Shell completion story (if relevant): install/discoverability; generation command or bundled scripts.
  • 5–10 example invocations (common flows; include piped/stdin examples).

Default Conventions (unless user says otherwise)

  • -h/--help always shows help and ignores other args.
  • --version prints version to stdout.
  • Primary data to stdout; diagnostics/errors to stderr.
  • Add --json for machine output; consider --plain for stable line-based text.
  • Prompts only when stdin is a TTY; --no-input disables prompts.
  • Destructive operations: interactive confirmation + non-interactive requires --force or explicit --confirm=....
  • Respect NO_COLOR, TERM=dumb; provide --no-color.
  • Handle Ctrl-C: exit fast; bounded cleanup; be crash-only when possible.

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 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. yesterday First seen · 89 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A df9961ac49a0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

create-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository sublimecoder/aios (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 856 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 97% identical to create-cli, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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