What is cli-for-agents?

A set of design rules for command-line tools used by coding agents. A command-line tool is a program controlled by typed commands; these rules cover non-interactive options, focused help, pipelines, errors, repeatable runs, and dry runs.

Use it when building or reviewing a CLI, especially its flags, help pages, stdin support, examples, error messages, and safe repeatable operations.

It prevents tools from blocking on prompts or producing unclear output that agents cannot reliably use.

cli-for-agents — Skill for Claude Code by ulises-jeremias: A set of design rules for command-line tools used…

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/ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit/cli-for-agents

Any agent

npx skills add ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit --skill cli-for-agents

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-toolkit-complete, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 116 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit/cli-for-agents.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit/cli-for-agents)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit/cli-for-agents"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit/cli-for-agents.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 77 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,004 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

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	$0.00077	$0.01004
Opus 5	$0.00039	$0.00502
Sonnet 5	$0.00015	$0.00201
Haiku 4.5	$0.00008	$0.00100

Measured 6d ago against content hash 73e8703fd50e, 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 6d 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.

plugins/agent-toolkit-complete/.github/skills/cli-for-agents/SKILL.md · 119 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 119 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLI for agents

Human-oriented CLIs often block agents: interactive prompts, huge upfront docs, and help text without copy-pasteable examples. Prefer patterns that work headlessly and compose in pipelines.

Non-interactive first

Every input should be expressible as a flag or flag value. Do not require arrow keys, menus, or timed prompts.
If flags are missing, then fall back to interactive mode—not the other way around.

Bad: mycli deploy → ? Which environment? (use arrow keys)
Good: mycli deploy --env staging

Discoverability without dumping context

Agents discover subcommands incrementally: mycli, then mycli deploy --help. Do not print the entire manual on every run.
Let each subcommand own its documentation so unused commands stay out of context.

`--help` that works

Every subcommand has --help.
Every --help includes Examples with real invocations. Examples do more than prose for pattern-matching.

Options:
  --env     Target environment (staging, production)
  --tag     Image tag (default: latest)
  --force   Skip confirmation

Examples:
  mycli deploy --env staging
  mycli deploy --env production --tag v1.2.3
  mycli deploy --env staging --force

stdin, flags, and pipelines

Accept stdin where it makes sense (e.g. cat config.json | mycli config import --stdin).
Avoid odd positional ordering and avoid falling back to interactive prompts for missing values.
Support chaining: mycli deploy --env staging --tag $(mycli build --output tag-only).

Fail fast with actionable errors

On missing required flags: exit immediately with a clear message and a correct example invocation, not a hang.

Error: No image tag specified.
  mycli deploy --env staging --tag <image-tag>
  Available tags: mycli build list --output tags

Idempotency

Agents retry often. The same successful command run twice should be safe (no-op or explicit "already done"), not duplicate side effects.

Read the full file on GitHub · 119 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.

6d ago First seen · 119 lines · 77 tokens per session scan A 73e8703fd50e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-for-agents is a skill published in the GitHub repository ulises-jeremias/agent-toolkit (16 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 77 tokens to every session and 1,004 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.

Building agents agent-toolkit ai-agents ai-tools claude-code cursor github-copilot

verify

Fact-check claims encountered during reading — dates, names, events, citations. Use when encountering historical facts or disputed claims.

yha9806/academic-writing-toolkit · 26 tokens

iblai-api-catalog-media

Manage an ibl.ai organization's catalog media resources via the Data Manager API — videos, images, documents, audio, and external links attached to a course, unit, or resource (item). Per-org, per-user CRUD plus search and by-item lookup, with multipart file upload. Use when attaching media to course/unit/resource…

iblai/api · 88 tokens

iblai-api-agent-skill

Manage an ibl.ai agent's skills via the platform API — browse the org skill catalog, assign/unassign skills to an agent, and create/edit/delete catalog skills. Requires a connected sandbox. Use when giving an agent reusable skill instructions.

iblai/api · 55 tokens

iblai-api-agent-safety

Configure an ibl.ai agent's moderation and safety systems via the platform API — enable flags, system prompts and responses (saved through the agent settings endpoint) — and review or delete flagged-prompt moderation logs. Use when setting guardrails or auditing flagged content.

iblai/api · 59 tokens

iblai-api-agent-disclaimer

Manage an ibl.ai agent's disclaimers via the platform API — the Advisory text (saved through the agent settings endpoint) and the User Agreement (create/update/activate). Use when adding legal or advisory notices users must see or accept.