agentnative.dev The agent-native CLI standard

About this standard

The agent-native CLI standard is a specification for command-line tools that behave predictably under agent control. Seven principles, enforced by RFC 2119 requirement tiers (MUST / SHOULD / MAY), and measured by a companion linter (agentnative) that scores any CLI against them.

Versioning

The spec uses semver-adjacent versioning with three tiers: MAJOR changes break citation IDs or remove MUSTs; MINOR changes add MUSTs or promote SHOULDs; PATCH changes edit prose without shifting requirements. The current version appears in the footer of every page.

Principle anchor slugs (#p1-non-interactive-by-default through #p7-bounded-high-signal-responses) are permanent. If a principle merges with another or splits into two, the old slug resolves as a permanent redirect to wherever the requirement now lives — no citation you made yesterday will 404 tomorrow.

RFC 2119

MUST, SHOULD, MAY, MUST NOT, and SHOULD NOT on this site carry their RFC 2119 meanings. They are not emphatic; they are contractual. A tool that does not satisfy a MUST is non-conformant with the version of the standard it claims to target.

License

Spec text on this site is available under CC BY 4.0. The agentnative linter is dual-licensed under MIT and Apache-2.0; see its LICENSE files.

Contributing

Pressure-testing is how the spec evolves. Three ways to contribute:

  1. Grade a real CLI against a principle you think the spec gets wrong, and open an issue on the site repo with your findings. Name the CLI, the principle, and the specific MUST/SHOULD/MAY that failed (or passed unexpectedly).
  2. Report a check that produces a false positive or false negative on the agentnative repo. Include the command, the output, and the check ID.
  3. Propose a principle edit — merge, split, rewording, demotion of a MUST to a SHOULD — via an issue with [pressure-test] in the title. The pressure-test protocol is documented in the spec's working repo.

Colophon

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