Go Standard CLI

Open-source Go projects categorized as Standard CLI
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Top 23 Go Standard CLI Projects

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  1. cobra

    A Commander for modern Go CLI interactions

    Project mention: Show HN: Convert Go to Rust | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-01-14

    and it gives you a Rust dependency.

    > $ rinku lookup https://github.com/spf13/cobra

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  3. urfave/cli

    A declarative, simple, fast, and fun package for building command line tools in Go (by urfave)

    Project mention: 15 Go Packages Worth Your Time | dev.to | 2025-06-26

    urfave/cli is well-suited for internal tools or smaller utilities where you want fast iteration without a large framework.

  4. elvish

    Powerful scripting language & versatile interactive shell

    Project mention: You probably don't need Oh My Zsh | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-01-09

    https://fishshell.com/ https://xon.sh/ https://www.nushell.sh/ https://elv.sh/

    You're replying to someone that says POSIX shells are holding people back, not that the terminal is a bad idea, there are many alternative shells which offer benefits over POSIX shells. fish-shell has everything you want from an interactive shell included, xonsh is a mix Python shell, nushell and elvish are adding types and other things to shell.

    The VT protocols that all shells have to confirm with are pretty dated and I'd love to throw them off the roof for something less stateful and with multiple font sizes but there's no arguing that text based interfaces are good.

  5. kingpin

    CONTRIBUTIONS ONLY: A Go (golang) command line and flag parser

  6. kong

    Kong is a command-line parser for Go (by alecthomas)

    Project mention: Fang, the CLI Starter Kit | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-06-18

    I think kong[0] is better than both options although cobra is by far the most popular. Might be worth a look.

    [0] https://github.com/alecthomas/kong

  7. Dnote

    A simple command line notebook

  8. The Platinum Searcher

    A code search tool similar to ack and the_silver_searcher(ag). It supports multi platforms and multi encodings.

    Project mention: Ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, Git grep, ucg, pt, sift} | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-03-24

    I was just trying to remember why I switched _to_ rg.

    It's nice and everything, but I remember being happy with the tools before (I think i moved from grep to ack, then jumped due to perf to ag and for unremembered reasons to pt.)

    It took me a while, but I remembered I ran into an issue with pt incorrectly guessing the encoding of some files[0].

    I do know after switching to rg everything was plain sailing and I've been happy with it since.

    [0] https://github.com/monochromegane/the_platinum_searcher/issu...

  9. pflag

    Drop-in replacement for Go's flag package, implementing POSIX/GNU-style --flags.

  10. go-flags

    go command line option parser

  11. readline

    Readline is a pure go(golang) implementation for GNU-Readline kind library

  12. carapace-bin

    A multi-shell completion binary.

    Project mention: Carapace | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-02-06

  13. docopt.go

    A command-line arguments parser that will make you smile.

    Project mention: Stop writing CLI validation. Parse it right the first time | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-09-06

    Docopt!

    http://docopt.org/

    Make use of the usage string be the specification!

    A criminally underused library.

  14. carapace

    A multi-shell completion library.

  15. liner

    Pure Go line editor with history, inspired by linenoise

  16. complete

    bash completion written in go + bash completion for go command

  17. flaggy

    Idiomatic Go input parsing with subcommands, positional values, and flags at any position. No required project or package layout and no external dependencies.

    Project mention: Flaggy package updated for first time since 2022 because of AI | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-09-16

  18. cli-init

    The easy way to build Golang command-line application.

  19. mow.cli

    A versatile library for building CLI applications in Go

  20. cli

    CLI - A package for building command line app with go (by mkideal)

  21. argparse

    Argparse for golang. Just because `flag` sucks (by akamensky)

  22. box-cli-maker

    Render highly customizable boxes in the terminal

  23. 1build

    Frictionless way of managing project-specific commands

  24. wmenu

    An easy to use menu structure for cli applications that prompts users to make choices.

NOTE: The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars. The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or since we started tracking (Dec 2020).

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Index

What are some of the best open-source Standard CLI projects in Go? This list will help you:

# Project Stars
1 cobra 44,062
2 urfave/cli 24,113
3 elvish 6,321
4 kingpin 3,564
5 kong 3,091
6 Dnote 3,041
7 The Platinum Searcher 2,825
8 pflag 2,741
9 go-flags 2,697
10 readline 2,293
11 carapace-bin 1,848
12 docopt.go 1,444
13 carapace 1,338
14 liner 1,089
15 complete 955
16 flaggy 949
17 cli-init 918
18 mow.cli 884
19 cli 724
20 argparse 639
21 box-cli-maker 637
22 1build 247
23 wmenu 229

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