create-cli

michalvavra's avatarfrom michalvavra

Design CLI tools with consistent UX patterns.

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[Developer Tools]

When & Why to Use This Skill

This Claude skill streamlines the design and development of professional Command Line Interface (CLI) tools by enforcing consistent UX patterns and industry-standard conventions. It provides a structured framework for defining command syntax, flag usage, error handling, and multi-format output (JSON/Human), ensuring that developers can build intuitive, reliable, and script-friendly terminal applications that follow best practices like those found in clig.dev.

Use Cases

  • Standardizing internal infrastructure tools: Establishing a unified set of CLI conventions across an engineering team to reduce the learning curve for internal DevOps and automation scripts.
  • Designing robust open-source utilities: Building user-centric command-line tools with comprehensive help documentation, clear error messages, and predictable exit codes for public distribution.
  • Implementing safe data operations: Integrating critical safety features like --dry-run, --force flags, and TTY confirmation prompts into tools that perform destructive or irreversible actions.
  • Optimizing tools for automation and piping: Designing CLIs that support --json output and --quiet modes, allowing them to be easily integrated into CI/CD pipelines and complex shell workflows.
namecreate-cli
descriptionDesign CLI tools with consistent UX patterns.

Create CLI

Design CLI surface area: syntax, flags, output, error handling.

Conventions

  • Long options preferred (--from not -f)
  • stdout for data, stderr for progress/errors
  • Exit codes: 0=success, 1=runtime error, 2=usage error
  • Include --help, --json, --quiet
  • Validate early, fail fast

Output

  • Default: human-readable tables
  • --json: JSON output (implies quiet)
  • --quiet: suppress progress
  • Respect NO_COLOR env

Errors

<name>: <message>
Try '<name> --help'

Destructive Operations

  • Confirm when stdin is TTY
  • --force to skip confirmation
  • --dry-run to preview

Help Format

<name> - <one-line description>

USAGE
    <name> [OPTIONS] <ARGS>

OPTIONS
    --option <VALUE>    Description [default: X]
    --help              Show this help

EXAMPLES
    <name> arg1 arg2

See references/node-js.md - Node.js with parseArgs See references/python-uv.md - Python with uv

See clig.dev for comprehensive guidelines.