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.

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

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

cli-schema.github.io/cli-schema

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

Feedback and contributions welcome via issues.

CC0 1.0 Universal — public domain dedication.