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Design/review CLIs for agent-friendliness: non-interactive flags, layered help, idempotency, dry-run, actionable errors. Trigger: 'agent CLI', 'automation-friendly CLI', 'headless CLI design'.
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Based on SOC occupation classification
Run objective, repeatable improvement work under an immutable verifier and hard iteration, cost, time, and no-progress limits. Use for approved experiments with an automated metric and sandboxed worker.
Write concise, calm technical responses whose structure matches the decision, evidence, or sequence being communicated. Use when drafting substantial plans, reviews, findings, documentation, or completion summaries.
Operate inside a ControlKeel-governed session. Use this before code edits, shell execution, delegation, deploy work, or any task that needs CK validation, findings, budget, proof, or routing context.
Keep a governed session within budget. Use this before long-running agent work, bulk processing, or any task where spend pressure could change the plan.
Close a governed work session with validation, proof, findings, budget, digest, learning, and handoff checks. Use when the user asks to wrap up, stop for the day, or leave work ready for another agent.
Audit tests that may pass without proving the claimed behavior. Use for periodic test-quality reviews or when coverage looks healthy but regressions still escape.
| name | cli-for-agents |
| description | Design/review CLIs for agent-friendliness: non-interactive flags, layered help, idempotency, dry-run, actionable errors. Trigger: 'agent CLI', 'automation-friendly CLI', 'headless CLI design'. |
| when_to_use | Activate when building or reviewing a CLI that agents will drive. Do NOT use for general coding or web UI work. |
| argument-hint | [CLI name or command to design/review] |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
| license | Apache-2.0 |
| compatibility | ["opencode-native","claude-standalone","cursor-native","codex"] |
| metadata | {"author":"controlkeel","version":"1.1","category":"development","ck_mcp_tools":["ck_validate","ck_finding"]} |
CLIs that agents can drive reliably. Most human-oriented CLIs block agents with interactive prompts, missing examples, and ambiguous errors.
Design or review against these rules. Record violations as ck_finding (rule cli.agent_unfriendly).
--help per subcommand, not full manual dump.--help: Real copy-pasteable invocations.--dry-run to preview, --yes/--force to skip confirmations.resource verb pattern consistent across all subcommands.ck_finding records for agent-unfriendly patterns