Process

When designing for the command line, consider:

1. What the command does

• What makes sense to do from a terminal? What doesn’t?
• What might people want to automate?
• What is the default behavior? What flags might you need to change that behavior?
• What might people try and fail to do and how can you anticipate that?

2. What the command is called

• What should the command language system be?
• What should be a command vs a flag?
• How can you align the language of the new command with the existing commands?

3. What the command outputs

• What can you do to make the CLI version feel like the GitHub.com version, using color, language, spacing, info shown, etc?
• How should the machine output differ from the interactive behavior?

4. How you explain your command

• You will need to provide a short and long description of the command for the help pages.

5. How people discover your command

• Are there ways to integrate CLI into the feature where it exists on other platforms?

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Last edited by ampinsk on August 4, 2020