Install agentnative

anc (also installable as agentnative — the binary ships under both names) is the reference linter for the agent-native CLI standard. It scores any CLI tool against the seven principles and tells you, by check ID, where it passes and where it falls short. Install it locally, then point it at a binary or a project directory.

Homebrew

brew install brettdavies/tap/agentnative

The tap publishes prebuilt bottles for Apple Silicon Macs (macOS 14 Sonoma and 15 Sequoia) and x86_64 Linux, with SHA256 integrity hashes recorded in the formula. Intel Mac and arm64 Linux users compile from source via the same formula. To update in place:

brew upgrade brettdavies/tap/agentnative

Cargo

cargo install agentnative

For a prebuilt binary without compiling from source (requires cargo-binstall — skip if you don't already have it):

cargo binstall agentnative

GitHub Releases

Platform archives — including Windows builds and SHA256 checksums — live at github.com/brettdavies/agentnative-cli/releases. Download the archive for your platform, extract, and put the anc binary on $PATH.

What's next

Once installed, the CLI is invoked as anc. See /check for usage — flags, output shapes, and how to interpret the per-principle check IDs. The principles themselves are spelled out at /, with one page per principle (/p1 through /p7).

To install the agent-native-cli skill bundle instead — the Claude Code / Codex / Cursor / OpenCode skill that teaches an agent to write CLIs against this standard — see /skill.