The Rise of Agentic CLI Usage

Over the past year, the utilization of development tools by automated agents has grown dramatically. According to data shared by the Cloudflare Blog, agents accounted for a quarter of Wrangler usage in March 2026, and that figure reached 48% recently.

Automated agents demonstrate high activity levels, using nearly twice as many distinct commands per day compared to human users and showing a strong preference for command-line interfaces. However, Wrangler historically provided commands for only around 280 operations while Cloudflare offers thousands.

Bridging the Gap With cf

To address these limitations, Cloudflare is introducing cf, a new command-line utility designed specifically for the next generation of software development. As detailed in the initial announcements, the tool enables automated agents to interact with every Cloudflare product seamlessly.

While Wrangler was constructed over time with individual product teams contributing distinct patterns and inconsistent terminology across roughly 280 command paths, the new tool standardizes operations across a much broader scope. Developers can review the background behind these architecture choices and read about how we were planning to solve this challenge in earlier posts.

Unified Generation via Forge

The expansion of functionality was made possible by Forge, Cloudflare's new unified API generation pipeline. By building upon OpenAPI schemas that already power documentation and SDK generation, the company was able to automatically generate CLI commands for over 3,000 distinct operations.

This pipeline allows developers and their automated agents to handle complex workflows—such as provisioning workers, managing domains, and configuring security controls—from a single unified tool rather than navigating fragmented command structures.

Built for Agents and JSON

Unlike traditional developer tools optimized for human terminal reading with unicode tables, cf treats JSON as its primary default interface. Pretty-printed for human inspection yet condensed for automated processes, this approach maximizes context savings and eliminates the need for constant filtering tools like jq.

Additionally, the tool incorporates natural language search capabilities through dedicated commands. When running help menus, agents are automatically introduced to search indexes that retrieve precise operations based on API descriptions and parameters.

TypeScript Configuration and Ecosystem

The new CLI shifts configuration standards toward a programmatic TypeScript format, improving accuracy through language server protocol integration. This structured approach helps code-editing assistants interpret project settings more reliably.

Developers interested in inspecting the implementation details or contributing to the project can review the source code and updates reported to our GitHub repository as the open beta rolls out globally.

Sources

• Cloudflare BlogIntroducing cf: the agentic CLI for the entire Cloudflare API