CLI

Definitions

CLI is a command-line interface used to control software from a terminal. It is commonly used for automation, scripting, and operational workflows, where teams need predictable behavior under real workloads rather than toy examples. Practitioners pay attention to discoverability, composability, and ergonomics, because those factors usually determine whether the approach improves quality, latency, reliability, or operating cost in production.
In plain English: CLI is a software engineering concept that helps developers structure code, run systems, or debug behavior more reliably in real projects.
Example: "We adopted CLI in the delivery workflow so builds became repeatable, local feedback got faster, and releases stopped depending on tribal knowledge hidden in one maintainer's shell history." That change gave the team a measurable gain instead of another hand-wavy improvement claim.