Skill profile
cli-for-agent
Design and review guidance for building CLIs meant to be driven by coding agents — non-interactive flags, layered --help, stdin/pipelines, fast errors, idempotency, --dry-run.
What it actually does
- A single skill encoding patterns for CLIs meant to be driven by coding agents: non-interactive flags first, layered `--help` with examples, stdin and pipelines, fast actionable errors, idempotency, `--dry-run`, and predictable command structure.
When to use it — and when not to
Use it when
- Building or refactoring a CLI, writing subcommand help, or reviewing whether an existing tool will block agents — interactive prompts, missing examples, ambiguous errors.
Not for
- The CLI you're building isn't meant to be driven by an agent — this is specifically about agent-friendliness, not general CLI UX.
Agent compatibility
- Cursor
Confirmed means the skill’s own source or vendor states it works with that agent. Portable means it only reaches that agent through the shared SKILL.md format and a directory convention — real, but a weaker claim. An agent with no entry here isn’t known to be unsupported; it simply isn’t documented either way, so nothing is claimed. Full model on Agent Skills Compatibility.
Evidence and provenance
Maintained by Cursor (official). Primary source: cursor/plugins — cli-for-agent, last checked against this page’s claims on . This page summarizes and analyzes that source — it isn’t a copy of its SKILL.md or README, and installation happens at the source, not here.