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go-cli

CLI application patterns and best practices

SKILL.md

Full skill instructions

Go CLI Skill

Supplementary CLI patterns and utilities.

Overview

Additional CLI patterns for argument parsing, progress indicators, and user interaction.

Parameters

ParameterTypeRequiredDefaultDescription
featurestringyes-Feature: "progress", "prompt", "color"

Core Topics

Argument Validation

var cmd = &cobra.Command{
    Use:   "process [file]",
    Args:  cobra.ExactArgs(1),
    RunE: func(cmd *cobra.Command, args []string) error {
        file := args[0]
        if _, err := os.Stat(file); os.IsNotExist(err) {
            return fmt.Errorf("file not found: %s", file)
        }
        return process(file)
    },
}

Progress Bar

func DownloadWithProgress(url, dest string) error {
    resp, err := http.Get(url)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer resp.Body.Close()

    file, err := os.Create(dest)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer file.Close()

    bar := progressbar.DefaultBytes(resp.ContentLength, "downloading")
    _, err = io.Copy(io.MultiWriter(file, bar), resp.Body)
    return err
}

Interactive Prompt

func ConfirmAction(message string) bool {
    reader := bufio.NewReader(os.Stdin)
    fmt.Printf("%s [y/​N]: ", message)

    input, _ := reader.ReadString('\n')
    input = strings.TrimSpace(strings.ToLower(input))

    return input == "y" || input == "yes"
}

Colored Output

import "github.com/​fatih/​color"

var (
    successColor = color.New(color.FgGreen).SprintFunc()
    errorColor   = color.New(color.FgRed).SprintFunc()
    warnColor    = color.New(color.FgYellow).SprintFunc()
)

func PrintSuccess(msg string) {
    fmt.Println(successColor("✓"), msg)
}

func PrintError(msg string) {
    fmt.Fprintln(os.Stderr, errorColor("✗"), msg)
}

Troubleshooting

Failure Modes

SymptomCauseFix
Colors not showingNo TTYCheck isatty
Input hangsStdin closedHandle EOF

Usage

Skill("go-cli")