cliare is live · free · last verified 30 Oct 2026 · viability monitor
cliare
Open-source Rust CLI that measures a released command-line binary as a black box and emits evidence-backed command shape files for agent harnesses.
CLIARE targets one specific failure mode: agents rediscovering your CLI through trial, error, and retries. Recording runtime evidence with provenance beats scraping your own help text, and shipping command-index.json and shape.json beside each release is the right instinct. The four discovery checks — help on every real command path, usage lines exposing required/optional/variadic operands, advertised and parseable JSON output, and discovery probes that avoid hidden writes — are a coherent working definition of agent-readiness. It is deliberately narrow: you need a shipped binary and comfort with Rust/Cargo plus JSON, CSV, and JSONL output. If you don't ship a CLI and have no CI gate, there
Verdict generatedVerified 9h ago · liveness 65/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/cliare
- Maintainers who want agent-readiness turned into an implementation queue
- Agent harness developers who need confidence, preconditions, and output contracts before routing intent
- Security reviewers checking discovery probes for hidden writes
- Release engineers gating CI on agent-readiness scorecards
- Teams that want a GUI, dashboards, or real-time monitoring instead of artifacts
- Projects with no shipped CLI, such as libraries or pure web services
- Anyone unwilling to run a Rust binary and read JSON, CSV, and JSONL output
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Skip CLIARE if your project doesn't ship a released command-line binary, or if you want a dashboard rather than JSON, CSV, JSONL, and Markdown artifacts you read in a terminal.
Running the full measure command re-probes the binary under a bounded traversal budget, so a large command surface means proportionally longer probe runs before you see any artifacts.
CLIARE is published as open source under Apache 2.0 and installs from the release install script or cargo install cliare, so the cost of adoption is engineering time rather than a subscription. That puts it in a different budget conversation from hosted CLI observability or agent-platform products: a solo maintainer and a platform team both pay the same zero licence cost, and the tradeoff is that you supply the terminal, CI, and harness integration yourself.
In short
cliare — Open-source Rust CLI that measures a released command-line binary as a black box and emits evidence-backed command shape files for agent harnesses. Best for Maintainers who want agent-readiness turned into an implementation queue, Agent harness developers who need confidence, preconditions, and output contracts before routing intent, Security reviewers checking discovery probes for hidden writes. Free to use.
What is cliare?
cliare — Open-source Rust CLI that measures a released command-line binary as a black box and emits evidence-backed command shape files for agent harnesses. Best for Maintainers who want agent-readiness turned into an implementation queue, Agent harness developers who need confidence, preconditions, and output contracts before routing intent, Security reviewers checking discovery probes for hidden writes. Free to use.
CLIARE is an open-source Rust CLI, built by the Modiqo team and licensed Apache 2.0, that measures a released command-line binary as a black box and writes out the command shape an agent harness needs before it starts guessing. Rather than trusting framework internals or stale docs, it probes the binary the agent will actually run: help, version, invalid-input, output-mode, and discovered command probes, all under a bounded traversal budget. Each probe records exit status, bounded stdout/stderr, timing, side-effect deltas, runtime context, and probe intent, so a claim like "this command exists" traces back to real output instead of a README. From that evidence it infers command rows, flags, operands, output contracts, diagnostics, and preconditions, then emits versioned artifacts: command-index.json, shape.json, scorecard.json, evidence.jsonl, condition-dictionary.csv, and generated AGENT_SKILL.md guidance. Two audiences share one measurement. Maintainers turn agent-readiness into an implementation queue covering missing help, unclear grammar, weak diagnostics, precondition blockers, and unsafe discovery, while release pipelines gate on scorecard regressions in discovery, grammar, output parsing, recovery, and safety. Harness developers load a shape file before executing so they route through commands with known confidence, preconditions, and output contracts. Install with the release install script or cargo install cliare; artifacts ship beside each release so agents can assess the command surface for that version. Where generic agent CLIs like Claude Code or Codex help you run commands, CLIARE measures whether your own CLI is legible enough for an agent to pick and invoke the right one.
Key features
- Black-box measurement of a released CLI binary without source access
- Bounded traversal budget across help, version, invalid-input, output-mode, and discovered command probes
- Per-probe evidence capture of exit status, bounded stdout/stderr, timing, side-effect deltas, runtime context, and probe intent
- Command shape inference covering command rows, flags, operands, output contracts, diagnostics, and preconditions
- command-index.json with command paths, summaries, runtime states, confidence, preconditions, output contracts, and suitability
- shape.json inferred model of commands, flags, positionals, output modes, shape gaps, and evidence references
- evidence.jsonl proof log tracing each shape claim to the command output that produced it
- scorecard.json with readiness scores, subscores, findings, model id, and model hash for CI gating
- condition-dictionary.csv plain-English definitions for labels such as precondition-blocked and candidate-only
- Generated AGENT_SKILL.md guidance for an agent reading evidence, shape, and score together
- Surface drift detection between docs, help text, and released binary behavior
- Harness reporting, describe, and surface query commands for routing intent
- Measurement profiles such as standard with --refresh to re-run probes
- Versioned artifacts emitted per release so agents can assess that version's command surface
- Install via release install script or cargo install cliare
Behind the verdict
CLIARE starts from an honest premise that most developer tooling skips: help text is evidence, not truth. A CLI can grow until docs, help output, and the released binary stop matching, and an agent pays the tax for that drift by trying flags, reading errors, and retrying until something works. CLIARE's answer is to run the binary the agent will actually use — help, version, invalid-input, output-mode, and discovered command probes — inside a bounded traversal budget, and record what happened. The evidence capture is the part worth paying attention to. Each probe stores exit status, bounded stdout/stderr, timing, side-effect deltas, runtime context, and probe intent. That side-effect delta field is what separates this from help-text scraping: it is how the tool surfaces whether help, version, and diagnostic probes quietly write state before an agent runs them. From the evidence it infers command rows, flags, operands, output contracts, diagnostics, and preconditions, and writes six artifacts — command-index.json for harness routing, shape.json for the inferred model, evidence.jsonl as the proof log, scorecard.json with subscores, findings, model id and model hash for CI gating, condition-dictionary.csv so labels like precondition-blocked and candidate-only stay readable, and a generated AGENT_SKILL.md so an agent has a local workflow for reading all of it together. Strengths: the two-audience framing is genuine rather than marketing. Maintainers get an implementation queue — missing help, unclear grammar, weak diagnostics, precondition blockers, unsafe discovery — and release engineers get a scorecard that gates on regressions across discovery, grammar, output parsing, recovery, and safety. Harness developers get artifacts they can load before executing. Everything is local files, so the outputs are diffable and can be versioned alongside a release. Weaknesses are mostly about fit. It measures rather than fixes: you get findings and an implementation queue, not patches to your CLI. The output is structured JSON, CSV, JSONL, and Markdown with no UI, so it assumes comfort with the terminal and with Rust/Cargo for the cargo install path. Connecting a shape file to a particular agent harness is your own integration work. And it only applies if you actually ship and release a command-line binary. Where it fits: teams whose CLI is now invoked by agents — code hosts, cloud and internal platform CLIs, local developer workflow tools — and who already have CI they can hang a scorecard step on. It also fits security reviewers who want to know which discovery probes write before an agent runs them. Where it doesn't: libraries, pure web services, and hosted-service buyers who want dashboards and a support contract.
Limitations
- CLIARE is an open-source Rust CLI (Apache 2.0, built by the Modiqo team) that measures command-line binaries as a black box.
- It expects comfort with the terminal and with Rust/Cargo for the cargo install path, and its outputs are structured files — JSON, CSV, JSONL, and Markdown — not a UI.
- It measures rather than fixes: you get an implementation queue and findings, not patches.
- It does not integrate with specific agent frameworks, so wiring a shape file into your own harness is your work.
- The condition dictionary exists precisely because labels like precondition-blocked and candidate-only need decoding before reports read plainly.
- And it only applies to projects that ship a released binary.
as of 2026-10-30
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Is cliare still active?
cliare is live · free · last verified 30 Oct 2026 · viability monitor.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is cliare? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →What do users say about cliare?
What people actually say about cliare — is it worth it?
We scanned public community sources for cliare on Oct 24, 2026 and could not establish that the discussion we found is about this tool rather than something else sharing its name. Only 2 of the posts we fetched could be positively tied to cliare. Rather than publish a sentiment score built on the wrong subject, we publish nothing here and re-run the scan.
How we verified this
Every listed fact about cliare— pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 30 Oct 2026. Pages mix model-assisted synthesis with human review; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified cliare 10 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed switching out, hidden costs, use cases, switching in, limitations, who should skip it, setup time, our verdict, summary, pricing fit, features, description
- — changed limitations, description, our verdict, features, hidden costs, who it suits, switching in, switching out, who should skip it, pricing tiers, pricing fit, setup time, summary, use cases
- — changed who should skip it, pricing tiers, our verdict, summary, features, description, who it suits
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed who it suits, pricing fit, description, setup time, summary, hidden costs, who should skip it, our verdict
- — changed SSL certificate
Showing the 6 most recent of 10 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does cliare cost in 2026?
cliare: Free to use. Pricing last verified 30 Oct 2026.
Plans compared
Every published cliare tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | — | Maintainers, release engineers, and harness developers evaluating whether their CLI's command surface is legible to agents, with no licence cost.Adds: Free entry point: Apache 2.0 open source, installed via the release install script or cargo install cliare, emitting command-index.json, shape.json, scorecard.json, evidence.jsonl, condition-dictionary.csv, and AGENT_SKILL.md. |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where cliare's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
CLIARE is published as open source under Apache 2.0 and installs from the release install script or cargo install cliare, so the cost of adoption is engineering time rather than a subscription. That puts it in a different budget conversation from hosted CLI observability or agent-platform products: a solo maintainer and a platform team both pay the same zero licence cost, and the tradeoff is that you supply the terminal, CI, and harness integration yourself.
Has cliare's pricing changed?
No plan price for cliare has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick cliare?
Pick cliare if you are Maintainers who want agent-readiness turned into an implementation queue, Agent harness developers who need confidence, preconditions, and output contracts before routing intent, Security reviewers checking discovery probes for hidden writes, Release engineers gating CI on agent-readiness scorecards.
Look elsewhere if you are Teams that want a GUI, dashboards, or real-time monitoring instead of artifacts, Projects with no shipped CLI, such as libraries or pure web services, Anyone unwilling to run a Rust binary and read JSON, CSV, and JSONL output.
Skip it if Skip CLIARE if your project doesn't ship a released command-line binary, or if you want a dashboard rather than JSON, CSV, JSONL, and Markdown artifacts you read in a terminal.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas cliare actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You run cliare measure mycli --out .cliare/mycli --profile standard --refresh against the binary you just built, then read the scorecard and condition dictionary to see which command paths lack working help, which usage lines hide required operands, and which discovery probes write state.
Outcome: You get a prioritized implementation queue of missing help, unclear grammar, weak diagnostics, and precondition blockers instead of guessing what agents struggle with.
You add a CI step that runs the measurement and compares scorecard.json across releases, watching the discovery, grammar, output parsing, recovery, and safety subscores plus the model id and model hash.
Outcome: Regressions in command help, diagnostics, output contracts, and discovery safety get caught between releases rather than reported by an agent that failed in production.
Before executing, your harness loads command-index.json and shape.json for the target CLI version, checks confidence, preconditions, and output contracts, and queries the surface for an intent like "list projects" before constructing arguments.
Outcome: Intent routes to a command with a known output contract instead of being discovered by trying flags, reading errors, and retrying.
Use cases
- Measure a released CLI binary and produce a command shape file for agent harness consumption.
- Gate a CI release on scorecard.json regressions in discovery, grammar, output parsing, recovery, and safety.
- Turn missing help, unclear grammar, weak diagnostics, precondition blockers, and unsafe discovery into a prioritized fix queue.
- Ship command-index.json and shape.json beside each release so agents can inspect supported operations before invocation.
- Compare CLI versions to detect drift between docs, help text, and released binary behavior.
- Check whether help, version, and diagnostic probes perform hidden writes before an agent runs them.
- Give an agent a measured command surface before it chooses a command path or constructs arguments.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of cliare — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
If you already have Rust or Cargo, install is one command (cargo install cliare) or the release install script; point measure at a binary and you have a first artifact set after one probe run. Expect the same afternoon to be enough for a small CLI, with harness wiring taking longer than measurement. Budget a couple of days before the scorecard is embedded in CI and your team can read the
Switching to or from cliare
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From hand-written CLI docs: measure the released binary and let shape.json plus evidence.jsonl replace claims that drift from actual behavior.
- →From ad-hoc agent prompt instructions: point the harness at command-index.json so routing reads measured confidence, preconditions, and output contracts.
- →From manual release QA checklists: move help, diagnostics, output, and discovery safety checks into a scorecard.json CI gate.
- ↗To a general agent CLI: nothing to move — CLIARE measures your binary, it doesn't run your commands for you.
- ↗To a hosted observability product: export the scorecard and evidence files you already generate; the artifacts are plain JSON and JSONL.
Resources & guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “cliare”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “cliare” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about cliare.
Official links
What are the best cliare alternatives?
The closest alternatives to cliare we list are Million, TestDriver AI and Bagasura. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Million | Contact Sales | Custom pricing | — |
| TestDriver AI | Paid | Pricing not published | — |
| Bagasura | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to cliare
View all
Million
Million builds React Bench evals for frontier coding agents, plus open-source React Doctor and React Scan for React performance debugging.
TestDriver AI
TestDriver runs AI UI testing on every pull request — a vision agent that clicks through real desktop sandboxes.
Tools that pair well with cliare
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside cliare, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Million
Million builds React Bench evals for frontier coding agents, plus open-source React Doctor and React Scan for React performance debugging.
TestDriver AI
TestDriver runs AI UI testing on every pull request — a vision agent that clicks through real desktop sandboxes.
Bagasura
Agentic QA testing: context-driven AI test agents and an AI bug tracker, free forever for unlimited users
cliare vs its closest rival
cliare's closest head-to-head is with Cognition Ai — If you maintain a CLI and want to make it agent-ready, CLIARE is a free, focused tool for measuring and improving compatibility with AI agents. For enterprises seeking an autonomous software engineer that handles end-to-end coding tasks, Devin by Cognition AI offers deeper automation with a $10M productivity guarantee, but at a cost and complexity unsuitable for small projects. Verdict generated
Head-to-head comparisons
Cliare vs Cognition Ai
If you maintain a CLI and want to make it agent-ready, CLIARE is a free, focused tool for measuring and improving compatibility with AI agents. For enterprises seeking an autonomous software engineer that handles end-to-end coding tasks, Devin by Cognition AI offers deeper automation with a $10M productivity guarantee, but at a cost and complexity unsuitable for small projects.
GeneratedCliare vs Bito
Choose cliare if you maintain a CLI and need agent-readiness evidence with zero cost and privacy. Choose Bito if your team uses AI coding agents across multiple repos and needs system-level context for planning, codegen, and reviews. Bito's live knowledge graph and MCP integration make it powerful but expensive; cliare is free and focused.
GeneratedFrequently asked questions
Categories
Best-of guides
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