rstropek/2026-claude-classroom/ai-tutor-cli

ai-tutor CLI

ai-tutor is the command-line way into the same to-do list that Bartholomew, the web app's butler, keeps. Reach for it when the user wants their list changed or read while you are working in a terminal; there is no need to open the web chat or poke the REST API with curl.

ai-tutor --help (and ai-tutor <command> --help) is the source of truth for flags, output formats, environment variables and exit codes. This skill only tells you when to use it; if anything here disagrees with the help text, trust the help text.

Run it as npx ai-tutor … from the repo root (plain ai-tutor works if it is on the PATH). It talks to AI_TUTOR_URL, default http://localhost:3000, so that server has to be running.

Login first

Every command except login needs a stored login. Start with ai-tutor whoami; exit code 4 from any command means there is no login or it was rejected.

Do not try to work around this — the login is the user's consent for you to act on their list, so only they can give it. When it is missing, run ai-tutor login in the background (it blocks until approved), then tell the user something like:

You're not logged in to ai-tutor. Open <URL> in a browser where you're signed in to the app, check that it shows the code <CODE>, and approve. I'll continue once that's done.

Relay the exact URL and code the command printed, keep it running until it exits (0 = approved, 1 = denied or expired after 30 minutes), then retry the original command. If the server is unreachable (exit 1), say so instead of asking for a login.

Commands

Use --json when you need to parse the result (ids especially); plain output is fine for showing the user.

ai-tutor whoami                       # who am I logged in as?
ai-tutor list --query dentist         # items whose title contains "dentist"
ai-tutor add "Call the dentist"       # prints "<id>\t[ ]\t<title>"
ai-tutor done 3f0c1a2e-7b1d-4c55-9a39-2f7e0d6b8c41   # id comes from list/add
ai-tutor logout                       # revoke the session and delete the token
ai-tutor login                        # device-code login, see above

list shows everything, done or not, oldest first; to show what's open, filter out the [x] rows (or "done": true in JSON) yourself. done needs an id, so look it up with list --query rather than guessing, and ask the user if more than one item matches.

If the session already has list_todos, add_todo and mark_todo_done tools from an ai-tutor MCP server, use those instead; they take the same login, and an error saying to run ai-tutor login means the login steps above still apply. ai-tutor mcp --stdio is that server and is only for an MCP host to launch — never run it yourself; docs/mcp.md covers registering it with Claude Code.