LWLwrless·Jul 20, 2023Submission
Command Line Interface Guidelines
1 points · Open discussioncli-guidelines
cli-guidelines
CSS2020–2023
cli-guidelines / cli-guidelines
cli-guidelines
A guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day.
3Distinct people
5Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 11:56:56 AM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month5 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-12-04 16:33:47 UTC to 2023-07-20 03:29:59 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2020 | 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| Jan 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2021 | 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2021 | 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2021 | 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2021 | 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2021 | 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2021 | 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2021 | 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2021 | 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2021 | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2021 | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2021 | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2022 | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2022 | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2022 | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2022 | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2022 | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2022 | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2022 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2022 | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2022 | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2022 | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2022 | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2023 | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2023 | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2023 | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2023 | 2023-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2023 | 2023-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2023 | 2023-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
5 sourcesMore details for any readers here: https://github.com/cli-guidelines/cli-guidelines/issues/57
In CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programsThese would probably get more attention if submitted to the issue tracker: https://github.com/cli-guidelines/cli-guidelines/issues
In CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programsHello HN!
We’re Ben, Aanand, Carl, Eva, and Mark, and we made the Command Line Interface Guidelines.
Earlier this year, I was working on the Replicate CLI [0]. I had previously worked on Docker so I had a bunch of accumulated knowledge about what makes a good CLI, but I wanted to make Replicate really good, so I looked for some design guides or best practices. Turns out, nothing substantial had been published since the 1980s.
On this search I found a superb blog post by Carl about CLI naming [1]. He must be the only person in the world who cares about CLI design and is actually a good writer, so we teamed up. We also were joined by Aanand, who did loads of work on the Docker CLIs; Eva, who is a technical writer, to turn our scrappy ideas into a real piece of writing; and Mark, who typeset it and made a super design.
We love the CLI, but s
Read the rest
o much of it is a mess and hard to use. This is our attempt to make the CLI a better place. If you’re making a tool, we hope this is useful for you, and would love to hear your feedback.
Some of it is a bit opinionated, so feel free to challenge our ideas here or on GitHub! [2] We’ve also got a Discord server if you want to talk CLI design. [3]
[0] https://replicate.ai/
[1] https://smallstep.com/blog/the-poetics-of-cli-command-names/
[2] https://github.com/cli-guidelines/cli-guidelines
[3] https://discord.gg/EbAW5rUCkE