Open Source CLI Tools
Command-line interface (CLI) tools let people control software by entering commands in a terminal, making common tasks repeatable and easy to automate. They can simplify file management, development, communication, data processing, and system administration, while fitting into scripts and other command-line workflows. CLIs are useful when speed, precision, remote access, or automation matters, and often work well alongside graphical applications.
Open source CLI tools range from shell enhancements and utilities to developer workflows, automation, and interfaces for working with data or online services. When choosing one, consider its maintenance activity, license, documentation, supported operating systems, installation requirements, security practices, and compatibility with your existing tools and scripts. CLI tools can serve developers, system administrators, researchers, and anyone who prefers keyboard-driven workflows or needs to automate recurring tasks.
270 repositories · updated October 15, 2026
agentrc: Prepare Repositories for AI Coding Agents
AgentRC assesses a repository’s readiness for AI coding agents, then generates tailored instructions and development configuration. It can also evaluate those instructions over time, making it useful for teams that want agent context grounded in their codebase.
ActiveHealth 69/100
RLM: Process Large Documents in LLM-Sized Chunks
RLM is a .NET CLI for breaking large documents into manageable chunks, processing them across multiple turns, and combining the results. It suits developers using Claude Code or scripts to work with content that exceeds an LLM's context window.
QuietHealth 25/100
ContextTax: Measure MCP Tool Costs in an AI Context Window
ContextTax is a cross-platform CLI that measures how much MCP tool schemas and responses consume from an AI agent’s context window. Use Anthropic token counting for ground-truth figures or an offline estimate when you do not have an API key.
QuietHealth 20/100
fsearch: Find Files and Search Their Contents on macOS
fsearch is a macOS file-search tool that combines typo-tolerant filename lookup with indexed search inside files. It offers a CLI, a small shared-index daemon, and a Rust crate for local workflows.
NewHealth 47/100
sandbox-runtime: Restrict Process Access Without Containers
Anthropic Sandbox Runtime wraps processes with OS-enforced filesystem and network restrictions, aimed especially at AI agents and MCP servers. It is actively maintained, but remains a beta research preview with platform-specific setup and limitations.
ActiveHealth 66/100
OpenShell: Run AI Agents in Policy-Controlled Sandboxes
OpenShell runs autonomous AI agents in isolated sandboxes and applies policies to their file, process, and network access. It suits teams that need agents to use tools and credentials without unrestricted access to host data or services.
ActiveHealth 78/100
fallow: Analyze TypeScript and JavaScript Codebases
fallow builds a repository graph to find code health issues, complexity hotspots, duplication, architecture violations, styling drift, and unused code. Use it from the CLI, CI, editors, or coding agents, with findings scoped to changed files.
ActiveHealth 74/100
skill-up: Evaluate and Improve Agent Skills
skill-up is a Go CLI for testing Agent Skills, agents, and workspaces with repeatable cases and structured reports. It suits teams that want to catch behavior regressions or iteratively improve Skills using evaluation results.
NewHealth 69/100
AgentSec: Audit AI Agent Workflows for Security Risks
AgentSec statically analyzes AI agent workflows for excessive permissions and paths from untrusted input to dangerous capabilities. It is aimed at developers and security teams reviewing supported agent frameworks before deployment or as part of CI.
ActiveHealth 32/100
skillrank: Find and Evaluate AI-Agent Skills
SkillRank is a Rust CLI for discovering, installing, and evaluating skills used by coding agents. Its paired local evaluations compare a skill-enabled run with a control to show changes in success, tokens, time, and cost.
NewHealth 55/100
agentevals: Evaluate AI Agents from OpenTelemetry Traces
agentevals scores AI agent behavior from existing OpenTelemetry traces, without rerunning agents or making extra model calls. It suits teams building instrumented agents that need local evaluation, golden-set checks, or CI quality gates.
ActiveHealth 61/100
OrcaReplay: Record and Replay AI Agent Runs
OrcaReplay records AI agent runs so developers can inspect what happened, replay interactions offline, and fork a run from a checkpoint onto another model. It is a TypeScript CLI for debugging and comparing agent behavior without modifying the agent.
NewHealth 62/100