cli-schema

CLI Schema

The open standard for describing command-line interfaces.

CLI Schema is a language-agnostic specification for machine-readable CLI descriptions — structured enough for AI agents to reason about, expressive enough to generate documentation, and precise enough to power shell completions and IDE tooling.

Think of it as OpenAPI for CLIs.

---

Quick start

If your CLI supports the __schema meta-command, run:

mytool __schema

Or look for a sidecar file next to the binary:

cat $(which mytool).cli-schema.json

---

Specification

• Specification v1 — the authoritative document
• Meta-schema — JSON Schema for validating a CLI Schema document

Examples

• gh.cli-schema.json — GitHub CLI
• git.cli-schema.json — Git

---

Website

cli-schema.github.io/cli-schema

---

Status

Draft — the specification is in active development. Breaking changes may occur before v1.0.0 is declared stable.

Feedback and contributions welcome via issues.

License

CC0 1.0 Universal — public domain dedication.

This site is open source. Improve this page.