cli_engineer 1.2.0

An experimental autonomous CLI coding agent
cli_engineer-1.2.0 is not a library.

CLI Engineer

Agentic CLI for software engineering automation. It features pluggable LLM providers, task interpretation, planning, execution, review and an agentic loop.

Quick Start

Installation

cargo install cli_engineer
cli_engineer --help

Basic Usage

CLI Engineer provides specialized commands for different types of software engineering tasks:

# Code generation
cli_engineer code "create a full-stack task management app with React frontend, Node.js/Express backend, PostgreSQL database, user authentication, and REST API"

# Code review and analysis
cli_engineer review "focus on error handling and performance"

# Documentation generation
cli_engineer docs

# Security analysis
cli_engineer security

# Refactoring assistance
cli_engineer refactor "improve code organization and performance"

UI Options

Dashboard UI (Default) - Interactive real-time interface with metrics and progress tracking:

# Dashboard with live metrics (default behavior)
cli_engineer docs "document the architecture"

# Dashboard + File Logging - logs appear in UI AND saved to file
cli_engineer -v security "analyze code security"
# Creates: cli_engineer_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.log with all session details

Simple Text Mode - Traditional command-line output:

# Simple text output (disable dashboard)
cli_engineer --no-dashboard docs "document the architecture"

# Simple text + File logging
cli_engineer --no-dashboard -v review "analyze code quality"

Key Features:

  • 🎛️ Dashboard UI: Default experience with real-time metrics, progress bars, and live log display
  • 📄 Simple Text: Clean terminal output for scripts or minimal environments
  • 📝 File Logging: Verbose mode (-v) automatically creates timestamped session logs
  • 🔄 Dual Output: Dashboard mode with verbose shows logs in UI AND saves to file simultaneously

Documentation

For comprehensive guides and detailed information, see the docs/ directory:

Command Reference

Command Purpose Output
code Generate new code Source files in current directory
review Analyze existing code code_review.md with findings
docs Generate documentation Documentation files in docs/
security Security analysis security_report.md with vulnerabilities
refactor Code improvement Refactored source files

Developer Setup

git clone https://github.com/trilogy-group/cli_engineer
cd cli_engineer
cargo build
cargo test

Features

  • 🤖 4 LLM Providers: OpenAI (Responses API), Anthropic (Claude 4), Google Gemini, Ollama (local)
  • 🧠 Real-Time Thinking: Live reasoning traces from Claude 4, Gemini, and local models; reasoning summaries from o1/o3/o4-mini
  • 📊 Dashboard UI (Default): Interactive interface with streaming thoughts and cost tracking
  • 📝 Smart Buffering: Intelligent chunking at sentence boundaries for smooth reasoning display
  • 💰 Accurate Costs: Real-time token usage and cost calculation from streaming events
  • 🔄 Agentic Loop: Iterative planning, execution, and review with transparent reasoning
  • 🔒 Local Option: Ollama support for privacy-focused, offline LLM inference (no API keys)
  • 📁 Smart Artifacts: Context-aware file generation with proper restrictions
  • 🔒 Command-Specific Behavior: Different file permissions and outputs per command type
  • 📖 Comprehensive Documentation: Auto-generated docs with examples and API references

See the User Guide for detailed setup and advanced usage instructions.