Audit your CLI

anc is the reference linter for this standard. It scores any CLI tool against the eight principles and tells you, by audit ID, where it passes and where it falls short.

Install

See /install for brew, cargo, and platform-archive instructions. Once anc is on $PATH, the rest of this page is what to do with it.

Run it

# Against the current project (cargo workspace, binary, or source tree)
anc audit .

# Against a compiled binary directly
anc audit ./target/release/mycli

# Agent-friendly output
anc audit . --output json

# Narrow to one principle
anc audit . --principle 3

Read the output

P1 — Non-Interactive by Default
  [PASS] Non-interactive by default (p1-non-interactive)
  [PASS] Has --no-interactive flag (p1-flag-existence)

P3 — Progressive Help
  [PASS] Help flag produces useful output (p3-help)
  [PASS] Version flag produces version output (p3-version)

P4 — Fail Fast with Actionable Errors
  [PASS] Rejects invalid arguments (p4-bad-args)

P6 — Composable Command Structure
  [PASS] Handles SIGPIPE cleanly (p6-sigpipe)
  [PASS] Respects NO_COLOR (p6-no-color-behavioral)

P7 — Bounded, High-Signal Responses
  [PASS] Has --quiet flag (p7-quiet)

Each line ends with a stable audit ID (p1-non-interactive, p2-json-output, p6-sigpipe, etc.). Cite those IDs in issues, commits, and agent output; they do not change between versions.

Three audit layers

Behavioral: runs your compiled binary and inspects --help, --version, --output json, SIGPIPE, NO_COLOR, and exit codes. Language-agnostic.
Source: ast-grep pattern matching on source code. Catches .unwrap(), missing error types, naked println!. Rust and Python today; more languages as they land.
Project: file and manifest inspection. Looks for AGENTS.md, recommended dependencies, dedicated error and output modules.

Pass --binary for behavioral-only (skip source). Pass --source for source-only (skip behavioral). Most projects want the default, which is "run everything."

What a score means

A [PASS] is a requirement met, not a compliment. A [WARN] is a SHOULD the tool doesn't satisfy; ignoring it is a choice, not a bug. A [FAIL] is a MUST the tool doesn't satisfy; agents will hit the edge it describes, and the tool will surprise them. Nothing here is a vanity metric — the audits map one-to-one to the requirements on the principles page.

See how widely-used CLIs score

The ANC 100 leaderboard is what running anc audit produces at scale: every popular CLI tool, scored against the same eight principles, with full per-audit evidence under /score/<name>. The scoring rules are documented on the methodology page; the underlying JSON schema is enumerated at /scorecard-schema.

Source: github.com/brettdavies/agentnative-cli.