Spaces: A CLI Built for Humans and Agents

Mistral AI developed a command-line tool, Spaces, and discovered the need to design for both human developers and AI agents. The team found that agents were unable to handle interactive prompts or implicit environmental states, such as the current working directory. Key solutions involved providing flag equivalents for every interactive input, using structured data for configuration, and generating context files to guide the agent. Ultimately, the constraints imposed by designing for agents led to a more robust, scriptable, and better tool for all users.