A curated, multilingual CLI toolbox that humans and AI agents operate equally well. The command is ncly.
ncly --help
ncly --version
ncly completion bashNicely is in early development and has no release yet. The vision explains what it is and why, and the milestones list the work in order.
The current build implements help, the version, and shell completion. It also establishes the JSON error contract, configuration, and English message catalog. The commands below are planned work.
Nicely is a small core that every domain extends, in the spirit of Pi. Core brings describe, doctor, auth, run, and tap. It finds extensions named ncly-<domain>, and it bundles one extension, skill, which agents use to learn Nicely. Everything else is an extension, including the first ones: agent, which runs a task through Claude Code, Pi, and other harnesses, and transcript, which transcribes YouTube and Zoom audio and summarizes it through agent. Taps arrive between the two, so transcript installs from the official tap. Everyday domains such as markdown and video, a private docs hub, and Canadian French follow. The domain table records their scope.
Interactive forms will ask for missing values. Scripts and agents set NCLY_NO_INPUT=1 to prevent questions, including in a pseudo-terminal, and use --json or NCLY_JSON=1 for machine output. Commands group actions by domain, such as ncly transcript run youtube.
Once the skill extension ships, one line in your agent instructions will teach an agent to use Nicely:
Before using ncly, run ncly skill view nicely
The bundled nicely skill covers discovery, readiness, dry run, retry safety, inspection, and explicit resume, and each extension ships a skill for its own commands. The agent contract defines the fields and recovery rules. Saved records and verified output files retain work across sessions.
There is no release yet. The first release installs with:
| System | Installation |
|---|---|
| macOS | brew install pascalandy/tap/ncly |
| Linux | Download the archive for your architecture from the releases page |
Homebrew installs the completions for zsh, bash, and fish. On Linux, extract the archive into an empty folder, then put ncly and its completions where your shell finds them:
install -Dm755 ncly ~/.local/bin/ncly
install -Dm644 completions/ncly.bash ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/ncly
install -Dm644 completions/_ncly ~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions/_ncly
install -Dm644 completions/ncly.fish ~/.config/fish/completions/ncly.fishThese commands target the default folders: bash also needs the bash-completion package, and with custom XDG folders, use the folders that your shell reads instead. ~/.local/bin must be on your PATH. For zsh, add fpath=(~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions $fpath) to ~/.zshrc before compinit runs.
Nicely sends no telemetry. It contacts a service only when a command you run needs it, such as Deepgram for ncly transcript.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. AGENTS.md explains how changes are made.
MIT. See LICENSE.