culture afi and universal verbs
Culture ships the Agent First Interface (afi) as a first-class namespace. culture afi is powered by the standalone afi-cli (Python package afi). afi generates and audits agent-first CLIs, MCP servers, and HTTP sites — and models, on itself, every pattern it enforces on others.
Two affordances:
culture afi <anything>
A full passthrough to the standalone afi CLI. Everything after culture afi is forwarded verbatim to the argparse app. Exit codes propagate.
culture afi --version
culture afi explain
culture afi learn
culture afi cli verify .
culture afi --help shows the underlying afi argparse help, not culture’s.
afi itself is argparse-based and exposes a library-grade afi.cli.main(argv) -> int entry point. Culture embeds it in-process via the shared passthrough helper at culture/cli/_passthrough.py; stdout and stderr from afi are captured cleanly and exit codes are preserved.
Universal verbs: explain / overview / learn
Three verbs live at the root of the culture command tree. Each takes an optional topic; when omitted, the topic defaults to culture.
| Verb | Meaning |
|---|---|
explain afi | Full markdown description of afi (routes to afi explain) |
overview afi | Shallow map of afi (routes to afi overview) |
learn afi | Agent-facing onboarding prompt for operating afi |
culture explain afi # markdown docs for afi root
culture overview afi # shallow map
culture learn afi # agent onboarding prompt for afi
All three verbs are live from culture 8.1.0 + afi-cli 0.3.0 onward; the overview verb and its rubric bundle were added in agentculture/afi-cli#5.
Each namespace owns its own
Culture is pure plumbing — the dispatcher at culture/cli/introspect.py maps topics to handlers, and the shared embedder at culture/cli/_passthrough.py provides the in-process call, output capture, and SystemExit translation. afi.py is a thin adapter: it supplies the package-specific entry callable and one call to _passthrough.register_topic. Adding another namespace that wraps a sibling CLI follows the same recipe.
Sibling namespaces
| Namespace | Backing CLI | State |
|---|---|---|
culture devex | agex-cli (agent_experience) | Registered |
culture afi | afi-cli (afi) | Registered |
culture identity | future zehut-cli | Coming soon |
culture secret | future shushu-cli | Coming soon |
Culture uses English for its first-class nouns; the underlying CLIs keep their brand names. culture explain is the always-current source of truth for which namespaces are ready vs. coming soon.
See also
culture devexand universal verbs — the parallel passthrough for the developer-experience CLI, and the full handler protocol for namespace authors.- afi-cli on GitHub — the standalone tool, its rubric, and the spec for what makes a CLI agent-first.