CLI-use – turn any MCP server into a CLI in one command

Hi everyone,I built cli-use, a small Python tool that turns any MCP server into a native CLI.The idea is simple:
HTTP has curl, Docker has docker, Kubernetes has kubectl — MCP should have a shell-native client too.Why I made it:MCP is useful, but using it through agents has overhead:every session pays schema discovery cost
every call carries JSON-RPC framing
responses are often verbose JSON when the useful output is just a line or twocli-use converts that into a terse CLI so tools can be called like normal shell commands.Example:pip install cli-use
cli-use add fs /tmp
cli-use fs list_directory --path /tmpAfter that, the MCP server behaves like a regular CLI:usable by agents
usable by humans
usable from scripts / subprocess.run
composable with grep, head, xargs, etc.Example:cli-use fs search_files --path /tmp --pattern "*.md" | head
cli-use fs read_text_file --path /tmp/notes.md | grep TODOOne thing I cared about a lot is agent ergonomics.Every add also emits a SKILL.md plus an AGENTS.md pointer, so agents working in a repo can discover and use the CLI automatically.A few details:pure Python stdlib
zero runtime deps
persistent aliases
works with npm, pip, pipx, and local MCP servers
built-in registry for common MCP serversI also benchmarked it against the real @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem server (14 tools). Depending on session size, token savings were around 60–80%, mostly by removing schema overhead and verbose request / response framing.It’s still alpha, but already usable.Repo:
github.com/JustVugg/cli-use