Making your CLI agent-friendly

Speakeasy faced challenges adapting its Command Line Interface (CLI) for AI agents, which initially was designed with human users in mind, featuring interactive prompts, visual feedback, and guided workflows. While these features enhanced human interaction, they hindered AI agents, which struggled with prompts and found visual feedback as noise. To address this, Speakeasy introduced non-interactive flags to bypass prompts, structured output for machine readability, and machine-readable exit codes. Additionally, they developed "skills," lightweight markdown files that guide agents in using the CLI, enabling them to navigate complex workflows effectively. These efforts were part of making the CLI compatible with both human and AI users, recognizing the increasing use of CLIs by AI agents in development environments. The company emphasizes the importance of designing tools that cater to both humans and agents, ensuring seamless integration into developer workflows.