# urfave/cli

A declarative, simple, fast, and fun package for building command line tools in Go

Repository: https://github.com/urfave/cli
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/urfave-cli
Homepage: https://cli.urfave.org
Language: Go
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: golang-library, command-line, go, yaml, cli, json, toml
Last push: 2026-08-24T18:20:54+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4799, "days_push": 9, "days_rel": 17, "gap_med": 12, "n_releases_24m": 30}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 24204, forks 1808 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:35.776811+00:00)

## What it is
urfave/cli is a declarative Go library for building command line applications with commands, subcommands, flags, and shell completion. It has no dependencies beyond the Go standard library and supports help generation, environment/file-based input lookup, and man/Markdown docs generation.

## Use cases
- build a CLI tool in Go
- parse command line flags and arguments in Go
- add subcommands to a Go command line app
- generate shell completion for bash zsh fish powershell
- read CLI options from environment variables or config files
- generate man pages and markdown docs for a CLI

## When to choose
- you are writing a command line tool in Go and want a mature, widely used library
- you want zero non-standard-library dependencies
- you need subcommands, typed flags, and shell completion out of the box

## When to avoid
- you need a CLI framework for a language other than Go
- you want a batteries-included framework with built-in UI, progress bars, or color styling
- you are targeting Go versions without Go Modules

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: cli, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, backend
- platform: go, cli, cross-platform
- tags: flag-parsing, subcommands, shell-completion, golang-library, config-from-env, command-line

## Member repositories
- urfave/cli (main) score 99

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:35.776811+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:56:16.502885+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/urfave/cli (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:35.776811+00:00, sha ad4210b32b82)
  - homepage: https://cli.urfave.org (fetched 2026-08-29T07:53:45.449956+00:00, sha 2bb6d279430a)
  - site_page: https://cli.urfave.org/v3/getting-started (fetched 2026-08-29T07:53:45.459008+00:00, sha 4036df7795b6)
  - site_page: https://cli.urfave.org/v2/getting-started (fetched 2026-08-29T07:53:45.460819+00:00, sha 62616f796c6f)
  - site_page: https://cli.urfave.org/v1/getting-started (fetched 2026-08-29T07:53:45.463052+00:00, sha 11e531be6602)
  - site_page: https://cli.urfave.org/v3/migrating-from-older-releases (fetched 2026-08-29T07:53:45.465487+00:00, sha 5455cc1a2e4f)
  - site_page: https://cli.urfave.org/v2/migrating-from-older-releases (fetched 2026-08-29T07:53:45.468044+00:00, sha 7b0054080f32)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.