CLI Development Principles

Guidelines for building fast, intuitive, cross-platform CLI tools.

When to Invoke

• Designing CLI tool architecture
• Implementing command hierarchies and argument parsing
• Adding shell completions and interactive features
• Cross-platform distribution planning

Architecture

Command Hierarchy

app <command> [subcommand] [flags] [args]
app task create --priority high "Deploy fix"
app task list --status active --format json