A reusable design guide and reference implementation for command-line tools, which are programs controlled by typed terminal commands. It defines how one entry point starts itself, shows help, runs phases, reports failures, and displays status.

Use it to design or add a terminal interface, organize grouped help, show progress through fixed phases, handle failures, and provide a working CLI skeleton.

It keeps command-line output understandable when the underlying work involves noisy tools such as Docker, package installers, downloads, or background services. It also gives the command surface and output style a consistent structure.

How tenstorrent/tt-studio configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to tenstorrent/tt-studio. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tenstorrent/tt-studio/main/.claude/skills/cli-design/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tenstorrent/tt-studio

Made for: Claude Code.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tenstorrent/tt-studio/cli-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tenstorrent/tt-studio/cli-design)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tenstorrent/tt-studio/cli-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tenstorrent/tt-studio/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tenstorrent/tt-studio/cli-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tenstorrent/tt-studio/cli-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 199 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 3,614 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits

NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026

SkillSpector: 2 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

high System Prompt Leakage · line 115
Skill contains instructions that could directly expose system prompts, internal rules, or hidden instructions to users or external parties.

Fix: Remove any instructions that reveal, print, or output system prompts or internal rules. System instructions should never be exposed to end users.
medium Privilege Escalation · line 164
Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.

Fix: Avoid sudo/root unless strictly required. Prefer least-privilege patterns. If elevation is needed, document the justification and scope.

How audits are shown

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00199	$0.03614
Opus 5.5	$0.00080	$0.01446
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00040	$0.00723
Haiku 4.5	$0.00020	$0.00361

Measured 1mo ago against content hash fca9ff89ec7e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

cli-design scanned grade B 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 1mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 5 executable files (install.py, reference/cli_skeleton.py, reference/console.py, …), 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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

- **Link docs; don't offer to fix the user's machine.** No `sudo service docker start`

.claude/skills/cli-design/SKILL.md · 265 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 265 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLI design

How to build a CLI that orchestrates messy tools (Docker/compose, package installs, downloads, background services) and still reads like something a person designed. The tools emit thousands of lines; the user needs about twelve. This is the whole design — command surface, run structure, output, failures, checks, testing — and nothing in it is specific to one repo.

Install into another repo

python3 install.py ../other-repo                        # skill + reference files
python3 install.py ../other-repo --module-dest mycli/console.py   # …and wire the module in
python3 install.py --user                               # available in every repo on this machine

Then see the design run before adopting it:

python3 reference/demo.py            # the output language, ~15s   (--fail for failure paths, -v for verbose)
python3 reference/cli_skeleton.py --help   # the command surface  (then: no flags, --info, --stop)

File	What it gives you
`reference/cli_skeleton.py`	a working CLI in this design: bootstrap → parse → early dispatch → phases → ready card
`reference/console.py`	the output layer (Rich only): theme, `step()`, phases, activity row, cards
`reference/demo.py`	runnable tour of every output element; doubles as a smoke test
`reference/patterns.md`	the four failure/progress patterns, with before/after and tests
`reference/test_cli_output.py`	copy into `tests/`: pure helpers, stream parsing, PTY + non-TTY render checks

Reference implementation in the wild: TT-Studio's tt_setup/ (+ its house-rules doc dev-docs/launcher-terminal-design.md). When you're working in this repo, the companion tt-studio-cli skill has the concrete mechanics — package map, flag plumbing, hardware detection.

1. The shape of the CLI

One entrypoint. python run.py (or mycli) does everything: setup, start, stop, purge, logs, status, bug reports. Not a script per task, not a Makefile the user has to read. One name to remember, discoverable from --help.

Read the full file on GitHub · 265 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 files 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.

1mo ago Changed · +2 lines fca9ff89ec7e
2mo ago First seen · 263 lines · 199 tokens per session scan B 98b7103debc3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository tenstorrent/tt-studio (52 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 199 tokens to every session and 3,614 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Languages React accelerator ai-agents backend-service chat-application ui-components

cli-design next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
cli-designtenstorrent/tt-studio	Skill	52	yesterday	Apache-2.0	B	199	Claude Code
compiler-portreact/react	Skill	252k	yesterday	MIT	A	35	Claude Code
tamagui-upgrade-v3tamagui/tamagui	Skill	14k	today	MIT	A	120	Claude Code, Codex
tamaguitamagui/tamagui	Skill	14k	today	MIT	A	44	Claude Code, Codex
tamagui-v6-configtamagui/tamagui	Skill	14k	today	MIT	A	0	Claude Code, Codex
tamagui-theme-generatortamagui/tamagui	Skill	14k	today	MIT	A	48	Claude Code, Codex
release-safetytamagui/tamagui	Skill	14k	today	MIT	A	0	Claude Code

tt-studio: Skill for Claude Code