Open manifest + reference CLI

Sonde: AI-native CLI manifest and tooling.

Capture how your CLI should behave in one machine-readable manifest, validate it with deterministic checks, and publish scored reports. Agents, CI, and other integrations can target the same contract instead of reverse-engineering every binary.

Shared contract for LLM-ready CLIs

Deterministic scoring model

CI and local parity

Quick start

Adopt the manifest and publish comparable reports.

npx @sonde-sh/sonde generate cli-good --json
npx @sonde-sh/sonde score cli-good --json
npx @sonde-sh/sonde publish cli-good --json

Manifest example

What good looks like

A strong manifest is explicit about command behavior, machine-readable output, and non-interactive mode. That is what lets LLM tooling use a CLI reliably across environments.

Explicit command contract

Stable JSON output

{
  "name": "my-cli",
  "version": "1.4.0",
  "commands": [
    {
      "name": "scan",
      "description": "Run repository scan",
      "supportsJson": true,
      "nonInteractive": true
    }
  ],
  "output": {
    "schemaVersion": "1.0.0",
    "formats": ["json"]
  }
}

Why maintainers care

Adoption creates leverage

Better LLM interoperability

Fewer retries and fewer hidden assumptions when external tools invoke your CLI.

Safer releases

Manifest checks surface behavior drift before integrations break in downstream repos.

Clear integration contract

Integrators consume known capabilities instead of reverse engineering prompt/output behavior.

Shared quality bar

Contributors validate against one standard, not one-off scripts.

Sonde CLI

How Sonde helps you implement it

Use Sonde to go from initial manifest draft to verified compatibility in local dev and CI.

1Run validation while implementing commands

2Generate report artifacts for CI

3Publish results in the report explorer

Implementation flow

sonde generate <cli> --json
sonde run <cli> --json
sonde score <cli> --json

Integration guide