A comprehensive design guide and scaffold for building CLI tools that AI agents can actually use. 10 universal design patterns grounded in real failures from building 15+ agent-facing CLIs.

Why Install This Skill

When your agent loads this skill, it can design, build, and refactor CLI tools that agents can discover and use without human help. That means:

Every --help output becomes a contract the agent parses to understand your tool
Every command supports --json for machine-readable output the agent consumes
Every operation is idempotent — --dry-run previews changes before they happen
Authentication is lazy — help and dry-run work without credentials
Errors are structured — different exit codes for different failure modes

What You Get

Directory	Purpose
`SKILL.md`	500+ line reference: 10 design patterns, 3-phase build workflow, agent-compatibility test suite
`templates/`	Python API client scaffold and bash CLI scaffold
`references/`	Agent-compatibility test suite, Python API client pattern

Triggers

Load this when building a new CLI tool, refactoring an existing tool that causes agent friction, or debugging why your agent keeps failing to use a CLI properly.

Requirements

Bash, Python 3.8+, jq, and a standard Unix CLI environment.

Quick Start

Start with the setup and first workflow in SKILL.md, then use the linked resources for the specific task you need to complete.