designing-clis — independently scanned and version-tracked by SaferSkills.
SaferSkills independently audited designing-clis (Agent Skill) and scored it 100/100 (green). The audit ran 55 deterministic rules across Security, Supply Chain, Maintenance, Transparency, and Community; it found 0 high-severity and 0 lower-severity findings. The full rule-by-rule trace and per-finding evidence are below. Free, methodology-open.
Findings & checks · 0 flagged
Every scanned point with the score it earned and what moved between them.
First recorded scan — no prior version to compare against.
The primary manifest — the file an agent reads to learn what this artifact does.
Modern CLIs are conversations between human and machine. Great CLIs feel discoverable, responsive, and forgiving. Poor CLIs leave users guessing, waiting, and frustrated.
Core principle: Every CLI interaction should answer: "What happened? What can I do? What's next?"
Building:
Improving:
Reviewing:
| Working On | Read This |
|---|---|
| New CLI under time pressure | practical-patterns.md (Priority Checklist) |
| Adding to existing CLI | practical-patterns.md (Working with Existing CLIs) |
| Fixing "confusing" CLI | practical-patterns.md (CLI UX Audit Checklist) |
| Command structure, flags | ux-principles.md (Familiarity, Discoverability) |
| Output formatting | visual-techniques.md (Layout, Spacing, Color) |
| Error messages, help text | practical-patterns.md (Error Message Patterns) |
| Overall architecture | ux-principles.md (complete overview) |
See ux-principles.md for detailed guidance and examples.
See visual-techniques.md for implementation patterns.
❌ Silent operations - No feedback during slow operations ✅ Show progress, confirmations, or at minimum "Working..."
❌ Cryptic errors without guidance - "Error: invalid input" ✅ Explain what's wrong, what's valid, how to fix: "Error: Invalid environment 'production'. Valid: dev, staging, prod"
❌ No --help text - Forces users to read docs or source ✅ Every command supports --help with usage and examples
❌ Wrong exit codes - Always returns 0, breaks scripting ✅ 0 for success, 1 for errors
❌ Color-only information - Inaccessible without color support ✅ Always pair color with text/symbols, support --no-color
❌ Walls of unstructured text - Dense output hard to scan ✅ Use spacing, alignment, hierarchy to structure information
When building CLI urgently, include these first (high impact, low effort):
Skip initially (lower priority):
Detailed guidance:
Research materials:
~30 seconds. Free. No account. Every finding cites a rule and a line of evidence.