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Designing clis

Skill technicalpickles/pickled-claude-plugins/plugins/dev-tools/skills/designing-clis

Personal collection of Claude Code skills for development workflows

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npx -y skills add technicalpickles/pickled-claude-plugins --skill designing-clis

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Use when building, improving, or reviewing command-line interfaces for better user experience - before implementing commands/output/errors, when users report confusion or frustration, or when CLI feels hard to use - provides UX principles, visual design techniques, and practical patterns for creating discoverable, delightful CLIs

SKILL.md

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Designing CLIs

Overview

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?"

When to Use

Building:

  • Creating new CLI commands or tools
  • Designing output format, error messages, progress indicators
  • Planning CLI architecture (flags, subcommands, interaction model)

Improving:

  • Enhancing existing CLI user experience
  • Adding features to existing commands
  • Making CLI "less confusing" or "easier to use"

Reviewing:

  • Auditing CLI code for UX issues
  • Responding to user complaints about difficulty
  • Troubleshooting discoverability problems

Quick Decision Framework

Working OnRead This
New CLI under time pressurepractical-patterns.md (Priority Checklist)
Adding to existing CLIpractical-patterns.md (Working with Existing CLIs)
Fixing "confusing" CLIpractical-patterns.md (CLI UX Audit Checklist)
Command structure, flagsux-principles.md (Familiarity, Discoverability)
Output formattingvisual-techniques.md (Layout, Spacing, Color)
Error messages, help textpractical-patterns.md (Error Message Patterns)
Overall architectureux-principles.md (complete overview)

The Six UX Principles

  1. Familiarity - Use known conventions (--help, --version, verb-noun)
  2. Discoverability - Guide users (help text, prompts, examples)
  3. Feedback - Show what's happening (progress, confirmations, state)
  4. Clarity - Structure output (spacing, alignment, hierarchy)
  5. Flow - Minimize friction (shortcuts, defaults, scriptability)
  6. Forgiveness - Handle errors gracefully (clear messages, suggestions, safety)

See ux-principles.md for detailed guidance and examples.

The Five Visual Techniques

  1. Color - Semantic meaning (green=success, red=error, yellow=warning)
  2. Spacing - Visual grouping (blank lines, indentation, alignment)
  3. Layout - Structured regions (panels, blocks, persistent areas)
  4. Symbols - Fast signifiers (✓ ✗ ⚠ →, checkboxes, progress indicators)
  5. Structured Feedback - Narrative output (phases, lists, visible progress)

See visual-techniques.md for implementation patterns.

Common Mistakes

❌ 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

Priority Under Time Pressure

When building CLI urgently, include these first (high impact, low effort):

  1. --help flag (2 minutes) - Include usage, examples, common flags
  2. Exit codes (1 minute) - 0=success, 1=error, enables CI/CD
  3. Clear errors (5 minutes) - What happened + what's valid + how to fix
  4. Progress feedback (3 minutes) - Show activity during slow operations

Skip initially (lower priority):

  • Color schemes (polish, not function)
  • Advanced formatting (tables, columns)
  • Multiple output formats (JSON, YAML, etc.)

Cross-References

Detailed guidance:

  • practical-patterns.md - Checklists, templates, decision trees
  • ux-principles.md - Principles with real-world examples
  • visual-techniques.md - Implementation patterns for terminal output
  • reading-list.md - Sources and deeper learning

Research materials:

  • research/ - Original blog-style documentation and analysis

Keep looking

Skills are one crate of 328,083. Ordering is by how many stacks a row turns up in, so the top of any crate is what has actually been picked rather than what has the most stars.