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Agent CLI Guidelines

Get the badge

If your CLI meets the standard, say so. Drop a badge in your README that links to the conformance checklist and tells users (and their agents) what to expect.

Pick the level you actually meet — Core (all the invariants) or Full (Core + the pattern SHOULDs). Be honest; conformance is a claim about behavior, not a logo.

The badges

Section titled “The badges”

Agent CLI Guidelines: Core   Agent CLI Guidelines: Full

Copy-paste (Markdown)

Section titled “Copy-paste (Markdown)”

Core:

[![Agent CLI Guidelines: Core](https://aclig.dev/badge/agent-cli-guidelines-core.svg)](https://aclig.dev/conformance/)

Full:

[![Agent CLI Guidelines: Full](https://aclig.dev/badge/agent-cli-guidelines-full.svg)](https://aclig.dev/conformance/)

HTML

Section titled “HTML”
<a href="https://aclig.dev/conformance/">
  <img alt="Agent CLI Guidelines: Full" src="https://aclig.dev/badge/agent-cli-guidelines-full.svg">
</a>

Prefer shields.io?

Section titled “Prefer shields.io?”

A generated equivalent, if you’d rather not hotlink the SVG:

[![Agent CLI Guidelines](https://img.shields.io/badge/Agent_CLI_Guidelines-Full-5b5bd6?labelColor=16162a)](https://aclig.dev/conformance/)

A one-line conformance statement

Section titled “A one-line conformance statement”

Plain text for a README line, release notes, or a tool’s --help/agent output:

Follows the Agent CLI Guidelines (v0.1, Full) — read-only by default, structured,
self-describing, stable exit codes. https://aclig.dev

Cite the version

Section titled “Cite the version”

The standard is versioned (currently v0.1) — see Evolution. When you claim conformance, name the version and level you targeted (e.g. “Agent CLI Guidelines v0.1, Core”) so the claim stays meaningful as the standard evolves.

A worked example

Section titled “A worked example”

nxstate — a read-only Cisco Nexus state CLI — is built to Full conformance and wears the badge in its README. It’s a useful reference for what the checklist looks like in real code.