Show HN: Clify – generate a CLI from any API docs, use it as agent tooling
github.comclify is a Claude Code plugin. Give it an API documentation URL and it generates a complete CLI repo: commands for every endpoint, smoke tests, zero npm dependencies.
Try it inside Claude Code: 1. /plugin marketplace add derrickko/clify 2. /plugin install clify@derrickko-clify 3. Run /clify <documentation url>
You'll have a working CLI in about 10 minutes.
I was building agents to manage ad campaigns. Meta's Marketing API has no CLI, and no MCP server either. So I wrote one by hand. It worked, but then I looked at the next API I needed and realized the same problem is everywhere: tons of great APIs out there with no agent-friendly interface at all.
clify automates that. Point it at docs, get back a CLI. A single CLI call costs 10-32x fewer tokens than the equivalent MCP call because there's no protocol overhead, no schema negotiation. Each generated CLI has its own agent memory system that stores command chains. When an agent figures out the right sequence of calls to get the data you need, it remembers the path for next time.
Here's an example of what the output looks like: https://github.com/derrickko/meta-ads-cli
Related thread with good discussion on CLI vs MCP for agents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47208398
Both repos are open source. Code is all there if you want to look at how it works before installing. Would love feedback!
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