I Was Tired of Remembering Dozens of Terminal Commands, So I Built My Own CLI

Arthur Iarley — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:43:40 +0000

Every day I found myself jumping between different terminal utilities.

One command for Docker.

Another for Git.

Another to inspect ports.

Another to pretty-print JSON.

Another to decode JWTs.

None of these tools are bad—in fact, they're excellent. The problem is that they all have different interfaces, different flags, and different mental models.

After enough context switching, I started wondering:

What if the terminal itself felt more consistent?

So I started building DevCLI, an open-source command-line tool that brings common developer utilities into a single interface.

What it currently does

At the moment, DevCLI includes tools for:

Environment diagnostics
Docker utilities
Git helpers
Port inspection and management
JSON formatting
JWT inspection
And more

Instead of remembering dozens of unrelated commands, the goal is to have one entry point for everyday developer tasks.

Why another CLI?

This isn't about replacing Docker, Git, or jq.

Those tools are already great.

The idea is to make common workflows easier to discover and faster to use, especially when switching between projects or helping less experienced developers.

Think of it as a toolbox rather than a replacement.

What I'm experimenting with

One area I'm particularly interested in is extensibility.

My long-term goal is to support plugins so developers can add their own commands, frameworks, or integrations without modifying the core project.

I'd also like the CLI to become more context-aware—for example, detecting the current project type and surfacing relevant commands automatically.

Things I'm still figuring out

Some questions I'm thinking about are:

Should plugins be installed globally or per project?
How opinionated should the command structure be?
Should framework-specific commands live in separate packages?
What's the best balance between simplicity and flexibility?

I'd love to hear how you'd approach these problems.

The project

The source code is available on GitHub:

https://github.com/1arley/devcli

If you'd like to try it, I'd really appreciate your feedback, feature requests, or even criticism. It's still early, and community input will have a huge impact on where the project goes next.

Thanks for reading!

DEV Community: Arthur Iarley

I Was Tired of Remembering Dozens of Terminal Commands, So I Built My Own CLI