CLI Planning Patterns

Quick Guide: A command's flags, exit codes, output streams and config keys are contracts that humans, scripts and CI all branch on, so the spec states each one the feature touches — user-facing text verbatim — and leaves out the sections it does not touch. Four facts change the answer more often than taste does: a secret never takes a flag value; Ctrl+C at a key-reading prompt is a keypress, not a signal; exiting 130 is not the same as dying by SIGINT; and prompts render on stdout unless the spec moves them.

Detailed Resources:

• examples/core.md — a fill-in template for each section below, and a worked specification for a deploy command that uses them

Which sections the spec needs

Each section governs one kind of contract. Include it only when the spec touches that contract — a section filled with placeholders reads as a decision nobody made.