GitPedia

Clikt

Multiplatform command line interface parsing for Kotlin

From ajalt·Updated June 20, 2026·View on GitHub·

Clikt *(pronounced "clicked")* is a multiplatform Kotlin library that makes writing command line interfaces simple and intuitive. It's the "Command Line Interface for Kotlin". The project is written primarily in Kotlin, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 license, first published in 2018. It has gained significant community traction with 2,980 stars and 132 forks on GitHub. Key topics include: argument-parser, argument-parsing, cli, command-line, command-line-parser.

Latest release: 5.1.0
January 16, 2026View Changelog →
<h1 align="center"> <img src="docs/img/wordmark.svg"> <p><img src="docs/img/animation.png"></p> </h1>

Clikt (pronounced "clicked") is a multiplatform Kotlin library that makes writing command line
interfaces simple and intuitive. It's the "Command Line Interface for Kotlin".

It is designed to make the process of writing command line tools effortless
while supporting a wide variety of use cases and allowing advanced
customization when needed.

Clikt has:

  • arbitrary nesting of commands
  • composable, type safe parameter values
  • generation of help output and shell autocomplete scripts
  • multiplatform packages for JVM, Node.js, and native Linux, Windows and macOS

What does it look like? Here's a complete example of a simple Clikt program:

kotlin
class Hello : CliktCommand() { val count: Int by option().int().default(1).help("Number of greetings") val name: String by option().prompt("Your name").help("The person to greet") override fun run() { repeat(count) { echo("Hello $name!") } } } fun main(args: Array<String>) = Hello().main(args)

And here's what it looks like when run:

<p align="center"><img src="docs/img/readme_screenshot1.png"></p>

The help page is generated for you:

<p align="center"><img src="docs/img/readme_screenshot2.png"></p>

Errors are also taken care of:

<p align="center"><img src="docs/img/readme_screenshot3.png"></p>

Documentation

The full documentation can be found on the website.

There are also a number of sample applications. You can run
them with the included runsample script.

Installation

Clikt is distributed through Maven Central.

kotlin
dependencies { implementation("com.github.ajalt.clikt:clikt:5.1.0") // optional support for rendering markdown in help messages implementation("com.github.ajalt.clikt:clikt-markdown:5.1.0") }

There is also a smaller core module available. See the docs for details.

If you're using Maven instead of Gradle, use <artifactId>clikt-jvm</artifactId>

Multiplatform

Clikt supports most multiplatform targets.
See the docs
for more information about functionality supported on each target. You'll need to use Gradle 6 or
newer.

Snapshots

<details> <summary>Snapshot builds are also available</summary>

Sonatype has instructions for consuming snapshots

<p> You'll need to add the Central Portal snapshots repository:
kotlin
repositories { maven { url = uri("https://central.sonatype.com/repository/maven-snapshots/") } }
</p> </details>

License

Copyright 2018 AJ Alt

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from ajalt/clikt via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/22/2026