CLI Anything: Make Any Software Agent Native

Intro

There’s a growing trend in AI: giving agents access to tools. But most setups require custom APIs, SDKs, or SDK-level glue code. What if you could just point an agent at any CLI tool and have it work natively? That’s exactly what CLI Anything does.

It’s an open-source project that turns any command-line interface into a native agent tool. No per-tool wrappers, no boilerplate. Just install, configure, and let your AI agent talk to the terminal like it’s a native function.

What It Does

CLI Anything is a lightweight middleware layer. You give it a CLI tool (like curl, jq, git, docker, or even a custom script) and it auto-generates a structured schema for that tool’s commands, arguments, and outputs. Then it exposes that schema as a function that an AI agent can call.

Under the hood, it parses the CLI’s --help output, maps help text to structured parameters, and generates a clean callable interface. The agent sends a request (JSON or plain text), CLI Anything runs the command, captures stdout/stderr, and returns the result in a format the agent understands.

It works with any CLI that has standard help output or man pages. No special agent libraries required.

Why It’s Cool

• Zero‑effort tool integration. No need to write a custom connector for every CLI. If it has a --help, it’s ready.
• Agent‑agnostic. Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, local LLMs, or even a simple script. The interface is just JSON over stdin/stdout.
• Safe execution. Built-in sandboxing (configurable) so your agent can’t accidentally run destructive commands without explicit approval.
• Real‑time streaming. Commands can stream their output back to the agent, so long‑running tools don’t block the conversation.
• Works offline. No cloud dependency once installed. Great for local or air‑gapped setups.

Use cases you’ll love:

• Give an agent access to kubectl for Kubernetes management.
• Let a coding agent use git, npm, pip directly from chat.
• Turn ffmpeg or ImageMagick into an agent‑callable multimedia tool.
• Expose your own custom CLI scripts as agent functions without writing any wrapper code.

How to Try It

Clone the repo and install with pip (Python 3.9+ required):

git clone https://github.com/HKUDS/CLI-Anything.git
cd CLI-Anything
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then run the server:

python cli_anything.py --tool curl --port 8080

Now any agent (or you) can call http://localhost:8080/call with:

{
  "command": ["curl", "-s", "https://api.github.com"],
  "timeout": 10
}

Check the repo’s README for more examples, including how to configure approval workflows and connect to your preferred agent framework.

Final Thoughts

CLI Anything is one of those projects that makes you wonder why no one built it sooner. It solves a genuinely sticky problem (giving agents real‑world tool access) with a dead‑simple approach. If you’ve ever spent hours writing custom tool wrappers for an agent, this will save you a ton of time.

It’s production‑ready? Probably not yet for mission‑critical systems, but for personal agents, prototyping, or hackathons? It’s already super useful.

Try it on a random CLI tool today. You might be surprised how far --help parsing can go.

Found this useful? Follow us on X: @githubprojects