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Kalle Vänskä
Ship an official ClickUp CLI as a deterministic alternative to MCP for agent workflows
Problem
We are building AI-driven workflows where agents run locally or in CI and need a tool surface that is:
deterministic and cheap at runtime
self-describing (so agents do not guess capabilities)
stable across time (versioned contracts)
MCP introduces overhead and token cost due to tool discovery and repeated schema/context exchange. We want a CLI-first interface that is always up to date and can be invoked by agents and automation systems.
Request
Please ship an official ClickUp CLI that wraps core ClickUp APIs and Automation Webhooks, with the following requirements:
Help-first, machine-readable contracts
clickup --help and clickup <cmd> --help must be complete and structured
include input flags, examples, output schemas, and exit codes
JSON by default
All commands output strict JSON by default (--human optional)
Stable schemas with versioning
Stable exit codes
0 success
2 needs_input/validation error
3 blocked/permission/auth/rate limit
4 failed/unexpected
Authentication
OAuth device flow (ideal), plus optional support for personal tokens for power users
Clear scoping to a workspace
Core commands (v1)
tasks get|search|create|update
comments create|list
lists get|search
webhooks create|test (or automation webhook helpers)
docs get|search (if feasible)
Safety controls
--dry-run to show mutations without applying
explicit confirmation flag for destructive operations
Auto-update / version pinning
ability to force update before run (agent-friendly)
ability to pin versions for CI reproducibility
Why this matters
This enables a “ClickUp as coordination layer” architecture where:
ClickUp is the UI + state machine
external agents/CLIs do deterministic work in codebases
updates are written back to ClickUp reliably
This is lower cost and higher control than MCP-style tool calling for many teams.
Related
Automation webhooks already exist and work well; a CLI would complement them as the execution surface.