cli-guidelines/cli-guidelines resource

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

3829 stars · 121 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

An open-source guide (clig.dev) teaching how to write better command-line programs by updating traditional UNIX principles for modern usage. The repository contains the Markdown source of the guide and the Hugo site that publishes it.

Use cases

• learn how to design a good command-line interface
• guidelines for CLI argument parsing and error messages
• best practices for building developer CLI tools
• modern take on UNIX command-line principles
• checklist for reviewing a CLI tool's UX
• advice on output formatting, colors, and exit codes for CLIs

When to choose

• you are building or reviewing a command-line tool and want authoritative UX guidance
• you want a concise, community-vetted reference on CLI conventions
• you need a resource to share with a team writing CLI software

When to avoid

• you need a library or framework that implements CLI parsing for you
• you want GUI or web UX guidelines rather than terminal-focused advice
• you need a formal specification rather than practical guidance

Facets

learning-resource · maturity active

documentation developer-tools cli developer-tools documentation tutorials cli cross-platform cli-design unix-philosophy guide hugo best-practices ux-writing command-line web-server

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="cli-guidelines/cli-guidelines")