Write a LICENSE file with the year and copyright holder filled in.

A single binary with no dependencies, for macOS, Linux and Windows.

macOS / Linux

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/install.ps1 | iex

With an AI agent: paste this into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or similar to install the CLI and the agent skill.

Install the licenses CLI and its agent skill for me.

1. Install the CLI with the official one-liner for my OS:
   - macOS / Linux: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/install.sh | sh
   - Windows (PowerShell): irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/install.ps1 | iex
   Then run `licenses -version`. If it is not found, tell me which directory to add to my PATH.

2. Install the skill at user level, for the agent you are running as:
   - If `npx` or `bunx` is available, run one of:
     npx skills add forjd/licenses-cli -g -y -a <your agent, e.g. claude-code>
     bunx skills add forjd/licenses-cli -g -y -a <your agent, e.g. claude-code>
   - Otherwise, download https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/skills/licenses-cli/SKILL.md
     into your personal skills directory as licenses-cli/SKILL.md
     (for Claude Code: ~/.claude/skills/licenses-cli/SKILL.md).

3. Tell me what you installed and where, and whether I need to restart you for the skill to load.

go install github.com/forjd/licenses-cli/cmd/licenses@latest

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/install.sh | LICENSES_VERSION=v0.1.0 sh

licenses list                     # show available licenses (or: licenses ls)
licenses mit -n "Jane Doe"        # write ./LICENSE
licenses apache-2.0               # holder defaults to `git config user.name`
licenses bsd-3-clause -y 2019     # set the year (default: this year)
licenses isc -y 2019-2024         # or a range
licenses mpl-2.0 -o LICENSE.txt   # choose the output file
licenses isc -o -                 # print to stdout
licenses mit -f                   # overwrite an existing LICENSE

Flags can go before or after the ID. Quote names that contain spaces: -n "Jane Doe".

License IDs follow SPDX and are not case-sensitive. The GPL family also accepts the current SPDX forms, such as GPL-3.0-only and GPL-3.0-or-later; the license text is the same either way. Use one of those forms in package manifests, since the bare GPL-3.0 ID is deprecated.

The texts come from choosealicense.com and are compiled into the binary, so the CLI works offline.

skills/licenses-cli tells AI coding agents such as Claude Code how to use the CLI: which license and holder to pick, when to overwrite an existing file, and which manifest fields to update to match.

# Claude Code (personal skills)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/licenses-cli && curl -fsSL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/forjd/licenses-cli/main/skills/licenses-cli/SKILL.md \
  -o ~/.claude/skills/licenses-cli/SKILL.md

You can also install it with the skills CLI: npx skills add forjd/licenses-cli (or bunx skills add forjd/licenses-cli), or let your agent install the CLI and the skill together with the agent prompt.

Needs Go 1.27.1+. Run mise install to get the pinned toolchain.

make test    # run tests
make build   # build bin/licenses
make dist    # snapshot release for every platform (needs goreleaser)
make demo    # re-record the README demo GIF (needs Docker)

Pushing a vX.Y.Z tag on a commit in main runs GoReleaser in GitHub Actions, which publishes the archives to a GitHub release:

git tag v0.1.0 && git push origin v0.1.0

MIT © Forjd