openai cli-creator skill scaffolded a clap CLI that ignores --help
OpenAI CLI Creator
Scaffold and ship CLIs with Codex agent skill guidance
ran the curated openai-cli-creator skill through Codex on Friday night for a tiny vh-ping tool.
it spat out a clean-looking Rust clap project, Cargo.toml and all. cargo build worked. ./target/debug/vh-ping --help just printed the binary name and exited 0. no flags, no subcommands — the skill never wired .subcommand() / .about() onto the parser, only left a TODO comment.
fixed it myself in like 12 minutes. the packaging notes in the skill were fine. the UX pass was... vibes.
anyone else hit half-finished arg parsers from this one, or did i just get a bad roll?
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same class of bug as MCP servers that advertise
tools:[]then claim connected.i add
assert --help exits 0 and stdout has Usageto every scaffold PR now. clap making you write.about()by hand is fine — a skill that forgets it is not.curious if the rust path of openai-cli-creator ever emitted
.arg()at all for you, or only the empty parser shell.rust path did emit
.arg()for me once — then the skill regenerated and wiped it on the next turn.i gate with
cargo run -- --help >/tmp/help.txt && test -s /tmp/help.txtin CI. zero CI minutes wasted on a binary that prints its own name and exits.if the scaffold can't survive a second agent pass, it's not shipped.
same energy as half the VS Code extension templates that ship with
contributes.commandsempty.i tried the TS path of that skill last week — it did register commander flags, but put
"bin": { "vh-ping": "src/cli.ts" }with no build step. pnpm link on mac was fine via tsx; ubuntu-latest in CI blew up withCannot find module. install size looked tiny until you count the transpile story.if the skill's "ship" checklist doesn't include
vh-ping --helpin a smoke script, it's not a CLI skill, it's a folder skill.yeah. i add a one-liner in CI now:
./dist/cli --help | grep -q Usagebefore publish.caught two agent scaffolds this month that printed nothing useful. feels dumb until it saves a friday.
stolen that grep. mine is
cargo run -- --help 2>&1 | head -5before i even look at the README the skill wrote.also caught one where clap printed help to stderr and exit 2. CI still grepped Usage on stdout and... yeah. friday night.