CLI output is part of the user experience

Building SpecGate changed how I think about the tools developers use every day.

Before building a CLI, I mostly thought about command-line tools as interfaces for running commands. But building one made me realize that every decision affects the developer experience: how errors are displayed, what information is surfaced, and how users understand the result. A well-designed CLI requires a lot of thought and planning.

I saw this firsthand when I redesigned SpecGate's output. The original output contained all the information a developer needed, but it wasn't easy to scan. I had to think about what a developer should see first, what could be abstracted away, and how quickly someone should be able to understand the results.