12 months ago I couldn't spell CLI. I'm not technical. But now all my work runs through Claude Code or Codex. And my agents love CLIs when connecting to software. That preference is now showing up across GTM tech, and five of the biggest vendors shipped a CLI in the last four months. In this newsletter I'll explore the pattern, the numbers behind it, and who's leading the way.
For two decades we picked GTM software on usability. Nice UI, easy onboarding, good G2 reviews.
Agents are users now and they don't care about that stuff. They care about what they can call easily to get the job done.
I saw it in my own stack before I dug into the data. Two ways it hit for me as a tinkerer:
The new tools I'm buying. 12 months ago I wouldn't have touched tools like Apify, Exa, Firecrawl. I saw them as Dev Tools, not for me. Now my agents call them every day to help my work and make my systems better.
The way I use SaaS. I've always disliked Salesforce products as a user, hard to just login and find what I need. But I love them headless. My agents get more out of it than I ever did clicking around, and I never have to touch that UI.
It's now also clear in the data and market moves.
Everyone's racing to get "agent-ready"
Now it's clear -- everyone's racing to go headless and make their platform work for agents. The question is now more about the specific strategies and how you adjust.
If you're a buyer, that means pressure-testing your vendors for agent readiness. The smartest operators are rethinking their stacks for this paradigm.
If you're selling a GTM product, this changes the basis of competition. You can't just check the box with an MCP. It's a strategic maneuver. And the incumbents are moving fast.
The CLI is homefield for agents
The CLI is homefield for agents (and builders). It's the fastest and most complete way for agents to operate software. As I put it last week: "In my own experience, CLI tools work faster and better when I'm running agents. I'm not technical enough to know why. I just watch them reach for the CLI first."
CLIs aren't new. But their role in software markets is expanding. The wave started with Claude Code in February 2025, an AI product whose interface was a terminal. Then the other coding agents followed fast, OpenAI's Codex CLI in April and Google's Gemini CLI in June. Then we saw Snowflake, Basecamp, Stripe, Notion, Plaid and many horizontal software platforms embrace the CLI.
This summer it's hitting GTM tech.
Shipping a great CLI is strategic positioning. It sends a very strong message to the market. It's a way the vendor shows a next level of commitment to "agentic experience" (as Dharmesh calls it).
You can wrap your API and app with an MCP in a weekend. But building an effective CLI takes more investment and architecture. Kareem Amin, Clay's CEO, ranks the surfaces the same way: "MCP does less than a full agent or CLI plugin, on purpose."
That's why only 13% of products in my GTM Index have shipped a CLI while 38% have an MCP.
Surface | Share of GTM tech | Count |
|---|---|---|
API | 52% | 353 |
MCP | 38% | 258 |
SDK | 24% | 163 |
CLI | 13% | 86 |
683 tracked products in the GTM Index, July 2026. Coding agents and adjacent infra excluded. Surfaces overlap, so these don't sum.
The summer of CLIs
Recently some big names have gotten behind this idea:
Clay (July). Clay just shipped their CLI + API to much fanfare. Kareem Amin, co-founder and CEO: "You can now build on Clay right from the terminal with our Agent Plugin." (Clay blog, July 9)
Apollo (July). Apollo's CLI landed in July, alongside an API and MCP on one layer they call "Headless GTM." Himanshu Gahlot, Head of Engineering: "We stopped assuming our interface should be the only place the work happens." (Apollo CLI docs)
ZoomInfo (June). ZoomInfo launched GTM.ai, a branded CLI-first play in June. Henry Schuck, founder and CEO: "GTM.AI makes our data natively available to agents everywhere." (Schuck on LinkedIn)
HubSpot (May). HubSpot released theirs in May, Dharmesh calls for "agentic experience." On the new Agent CLI, still in private beta: "For many jobs, the CLI is simply the fastest, cleanest, most efficient way to get things done inside a system." (Dharmesh Shah on LinkedIn)
Salesforce (April). Salesforce went hard at "Headless 360" this spring. Marc Benioff, once it shipped: "Our API is the UI." (Benioff on LinkedIn)
Five top vendors in four months.
GTM Developer Tools built headless-first set the bar
I've been mapping the GTM Developer Tool space since June. This cohort is worth watching when it comes to agent readiness and CLIs. My index tracks 220 products in this cohort like Apify, Resend, Netlify.
31% of them have a CLI. 70% have multiple agent-friendly surfaces. When you separate the GTM Dev Tools from the broader index, they are 7.4x more likely to have a CLI (31% vs 4%). Since these providers have developer roots, agent readiness is already in their DNA.
The GTM Developer Tools market map
This category is part of a three-part shift that is going to challenge the legacy stack:
Agents are the new center of gravity.
Builders are replacing vendor managers (GTM engineers, Marketing engineers, etc).
GTM Developer Tools are innovating to enable it.
The future GTM stack gets decided by builders and their agents. They aren't stacking SaaS UIs. They reach for what their agents can actually call.
This is a business strategy shift, not a feature
This shift cuts deeper than a platform feature. It impacts pricing, packaging, docs, onboarding, PLG vs sales-led. All of it has to work for an agent now, not just a human user.
Vendors are starting to answer on every layer:
Docs. ClickHouse rebuilt its docs on the premise that agents are the primary reader: "More than half of developer docs traffic now comes from coding agents, not humans." (ClickHouse, July 27, vendor-reported number)
Business model. My smart friend Brendan Short read Clay's CLI as draining its own moat on purpose. Clay's product is a table, and the per-row economics were the model. A callable surface means the table stops being the only way in.
Agent readiness will be a huge factor in how software gets bought
Agent experience is reshaping how we buy and sell.
Jason Lemkin had some good takes on this point. He shipped an Agentic API Grader in April with public letter grades on ~100 vendor APIs, on this logic: "We're entering the age where you should pick your vendor based not on what your humans need. But what your agents need." (Lemkin on LinkedIn, April 25)
My GTM Index tracks all this so you can see who ships a CLI and who's positioning for agents.
How do you think about the agent-ready stack?