design-human-first-cli

design-human-first-cli is a skill for Codex from zacharygcook/agent-skills. It costs 62 tokens per session (808 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for designing command-line tools around the actions people need to remember and use. It also separates friendly interactive commands from structured controls intended for scripts or CI systems.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design, implement, or review commands, help text, onboarding, automation output, exit codes, configuration detection, and safe rerunnable workflows.
Why use it?
It helps remove confusing command syntax, unnecessary flags, manual setup, and interfaces that expose internal implementation details.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: agents/openai.yaml present.

Good fit Use it to design, implement, or review commands, help text, onboarding, automation output, exit codes, configuration detection, and safe rerunnable workflows.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli
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 zacharygcook/agent-skills --skill design-human-first-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zacharygcook/agent-skills

Made for: Codex.

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 design-human-first-cli

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for design-human-first-cli

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zacharygcook/agent-skills/design-human-first-cli.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 62 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 808 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 $0.00062 $0.00808
Opus 5 $0.00031 $0.00404
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00162
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00081

Measured 9d ago against content hash 7ba6ae25014e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-human-first-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 9d 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.

skills/design-human-first-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.

Design Human-First CLI

Treat commands as product UI. Start with the interaction a human should remember, then do the engineering required to make that interaction real.

Design the target surface first

Write the ideal everyday vocabulary before editing implementation:

tool init
tool status
tool validate
tool run
tool resume
tool upgrade

Prefer short, stable verbs; consistent grammar; obvious help; and commands that fit comfortably in a terminal. A user should not need repository archaeology or shell history to operate the tool.

Separate humans from automation

  • Human commands should be short, interactive, discoverable, and safe to rerun.
  • Agent/CI commands may expose explicit flags, paths, structured output, and noninteractive controls.
  • Keep the complete automation interface documented, but do not make it the main onboarding path.
  • Provide --json, exit codes, or equivalent machine contracts without degrading human output.

Remove unnecessary flags

  • Detect facts the system can know: repository root, sole package/skill, installed harnesses, existing configuration, platform, and available prerequisites.
  • Ask interactively for genuine operator choices: provider/harness, model, budgets, destructive behavior, validation commands, and ambiguous targets.
  • Do not invent defaults for consequential choices merely to avoid a prompt.
  • Do not ask users to repeat intent already expressed by invoking the command.
  • Preserve explicit flags for automation and for users who want to bypass prompts.

Automate setup glue

  • Make initialization and upgrades idempotent and preservation-first.
  • Create or augment configuration without overwriting existing user content.
  • Hide internal package paths, interpreter selection, file copies, symlinks, migrations, and adapter wiring behind the installer.
  • Use a small bootstrap package or launcher when an upstream package manager cannot perform required lifecycle work; do not document manual glue as though it were a polished installation.
  • Detect prerequisites and fail with the shortest actionable next step. Do not silently install system-wide dependencies or mutate external state without authorization.

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. 9d ago First seen · 89 lines · 62 tokens per session scan A 7ba6ae25014e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-human-first-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository zacharygcook/agent-skills (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 62 tokens to every session and 808 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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