The Agentic Advantage: Why Your AI Workflows Need a CLI

In the rapidly evolving world of AI, "agentic workflows" are the new frontier. These complex, multi-step processes—where AI agents execute tasks, analyze data, and drive business logic—are incredibly powerful. But they often come with a critical challenge: how do you control them? How do you make these sophisticated, often headless, automations accessible to your team without building a complex front-end for every single one?

The answer is elegantly simple and time-tested: the command-line interface (CLI). But this isn't your grandfather's CLI. This is the CLI, reimagined for the agentic era.

Welcome to cli.do. It's time to build CLIs, the agentic way.

The Bottleneck of Modern Automation

You've built a brilliant agentic workflow. Maybe it deploys a new version of your application, runs a sophisticated financial model, or triages customer support tickets using an LLM. The logic is sound, the code is production-ready. Now what?

Your team is faced with a few frustrating options:

• The "Run My Script" Problem: Only the developer who wrote the script knows how to run it, complete with the right environment variables and dependencies.
• The API Jungle: Team members must navigate a maze of API calls with curl or Postman, a process that's prone to error and difficult to document.
• The "We'll Build a UI Later" trap: A promise to build a user interface that never gets prioritized, leaving your powerful workflow collecting dust.

These bottlenecks limit accessibility, introduce risk, and prevent your best automation from reaching its full potential. You need an interface that is as powerful as your backend logic but as simple as typing a sentence.

Enter cli.do: CLI as an API

cli.do is a service built on the Agentic Workflow Platform that lets you transform complex business logic and agentic workflows into intuitive, shareable command-line interfaces.

The core philosophy is "CLI as an API." Instead of wrestling with boilerplate code to parse arguments, format help text, and handle distribution, you define the functionality. We handle the rest. You provide the business logic, and cli.do instantly generates, hosts, and scales a secure, professional-grade CLI around it.

It’s the ultimate bridge between your code and your users. No boilerplate, just pure functionality.

From Code to Command in Minutes

See how simple it is to turn a deployment workflow into a shareable command. With just a few lines of TypeScript, you can define a command, its arguments, and its core logic.

import { Agent } from '@do-sdk/agent';

// Define your CLI command as an Agent
const cli = new Agent('cli.do');

// Create a 'deploy' command with project and environment arguments
cli.on('deploy', {
  project: { type: 'string', required: true },
  env: { type: 'string', default: 'staging' },
}, async (args) => {
  console.log(`Deploying ${args.project} to ${args.env}...`);
  // Your deployment logic here
  // await triggerDeployment(args.project, args.env);
  return { status: 'success', message: `Deployment of ${args.project} to ${args.env} initiated.` };
});

// Your CLI is now live and callable:
// > do cli deploy --project my-app --env production

In this example:

1. We define a deploy command using cli.on().
2. We specify two arguments: a required project and an optional env with a default value of staging. cli.do handles the validation automatically.
3. The async function contains your core business logic—the actual deployment script.
4. That's it. Your CLI is instantly live and callable. No packaging, no publishing to npm, no server configuration.

The cli.do Difference: More Than a CLI Builder

cli.do isn't just another argument-parsing library. It’s a fully managed platform that redefines what a CLI can be.

• Zero Infrastructure Overhead: Unlike traditional CLI builders, cli.do abstracts the entire lifecycle. You don't manage argument parsing, help generation, or distribution. You write the function, and we deliver the CLI.
• Instant & Scalable: Your command is live and globally available the moment you define it. Our platform handles the scaling, so your CLI is just as reliable for one user as it is for one thousand.
• Built-in Access Control: You have complete control over who can use your tools. The .do platform's robust authentication system allows you to keep CLIs private for your team, share them with specific partners, or make them public for the world.
• Business as Code: cli.do empowers you to codify your business operations. When processes like "generating a report" or "onboarding a new client" become simple commands, you create a transparent, repeatable, and auditable system of record.

What Can You Build? Anything.

If you can define it as an agentic workflow, you can expose it as a powerful CLI. The possibilities are limitless.

• DevOps & MLOps: Trigger deployments, provision infrastructure, run data processing pipelines, and manage cloud environments (do cli db snapshot --env production).
• Data Science: Kick off complex model training jobs or generate on-demand data visualizations (do cli report generate --type user-churn).
• Business Operations: Automate invoicing, manage customer accounts, or sync data between platforms (do cli sync salesforce --object leads).
• Customer Support: Run diagnostics, reset user states, or fetch customer data securely (do cli support get-logs --customer-id 12345).

Stop letting your most valuable workflows remain locked away. With cli.do, you can empower your entire organization with the tools they need to succeed, all through the elegant power of the command line.

Ready to build your first agentic CLI? Get started with cli.do today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is cli.do?
A: cli.do is an Agentic Workflow Platform service that allows you to effortlessly create and manage command-line interfaces (CLIs) as APIs. It enables you to expose your business logic and automated workflows as simple, distributable tools.

Q: How does cli.do differ from traditional CLI builders?
A: Unlike traditional libraries that require manual setup, argument parsing, and deployment, cli.do abstracts the entire process. You define your command's logic as code, and we automatically generate, host, and scale the CLI, making it instantly available.

Q: Who can use the CLIs I build?
A: You have full control. CLIs can be kept private for internal team use, shared with specific users, or made public. Access is managed through the .do platform's robust authentication and authorization system.

Q: What kind of workflows can I turn into a CLI?
A: Anything you can code! From running data analysis scripts and triggering cloud deployments to managing customer support tasks or generating reports. If you can define it as an agentic workflow, you can expose it as a powerful CLI.