CLI-use

Details

External ID

47854957

Source

HN

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Launched

April 21, 2026

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Upvotes

7

Upvotes percentile

0.38817480719794345

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Fetched at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Updated at

Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

Hi everyone,I built cli-use, a small Python tool that turns any MCP server into a native CLI.The idea is simple: HTTP has curl, Docker has docker, Kubernetes has kubectl — MCP should have a shell-native client too.Why I made it:MCP is useful, but using it through agents has overhead:every session pays schema discovery cost every call carries JSON-RPC framing responses are often verbose JSON when the useful output is just a line or twocli-use converts that into a terse CLI so tools can be called like normal shell commands.Example:pip install cli-use cli-use add fs /tmp cli-use fs list_directory --path /tmpAfter that, the MCP server behaves like a regular CLI:usable by agents usable by humans usable from scripts / subprocess.run composable with grep, head, xargs, etc.Example:cli-use fs search_files --path /tmp --pattern "*.md" | head cli-use fs read_text_file --path /tmp/notes.md | grep TODOOne thing I cared about a lot is agent ergonomics.Every add also emits a SKILL.md plus an AGENTS.md pointer, so agents working in a repo can discover and use the CLI automatically.A few details:pure Python stdlib zero runtime deps persistent aliases works with npm, pip, pipx, and local MCP servers built-in registry for common MCP serversI also benchmarked it against the real @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem server (14 tools). Depending on session size, token savings were around 60–80%, mostly by removing schema overhead and verbose request / response framing.It’s still alpha, but already usable.Repo: https://github.com/JustVugg/cli-use

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