keyboards down · Mar 6, 2026

Agent-first CLIs are about reducing turns, not JSON

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After a month of making agent-first CLIs at work, I have settled on a few patterns that help coding agents over several tools my Claude uses every day. I was inspired by an interview with OpenClaw’s creator Pete Steinberger . He talks about using CLI over MCP for agent tools, so I started to make my own gmail CLI as an exercise. I told Claude I wanted to make an agent-first CLI like…

After a month of making agent-first CLIs at work, I have settled on a few patterns that help coding agents over several tools my Claude uses every day. I was inspired by an interview with OpenClaw’s creator Pete Steinberger. He talks about using CLI over MCP for agent tools, so I started to make my own gmail CLI as an exercise.

I told Claude I wanted to make an agent-first CLI like Pete’s gogcli. I was surprised when Claude told me that it was too human focused. Unpacking that with Claude really challenged my mind about what agent-first tools really means.

Read on /posts/01-agent-first-clis/ ↗

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