claude-better-cli

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Installation (Once You Have Access)

# Typical binary drop-in replacement pattern

# Place the claude-better binary in your PATH before the original claude

export PATH="/path/to/claude-better/bin:$PATH"

# Verify it's being picked up

which claude

claude --version

# Or alias it explicitly without touching PATH

alias claude='/path/to/claude-better/bin/claude-better'

Key Commands

claude-better mirrors the Claude CLI surface exactly. All commands you know work as-is:

# Show help (cold start: ~49ms vs 182ms baseline)

claude --help

# Check auth status (warm start: ~58ms vs 146ms baseline)

claude auth status

# Start an interactive chat session (~102ms bootstrap vs 311ms baseline)

claude chat

# One-shot non-interactive command (~131ms vs 428ms baseline)

claude -p "Summarize this file" < input.txt

# All standard flags pass through unchanged

claude --model claude-opus-4-5 chat

claude --output-format json -p "List 3 facts about Rust"

Configuration

claude-better reads the same configuration as the original Claude CLI. No new config format is required.

# Standard Claude CLI env vars are respected

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

# The tool reads ~/.claude/ config directory as normal

# No migration of config files needed

Performance Characteristics

Scenario

Baseline

claude-better

Improvement

--help cold start

182ms

49ms

73% faster

auth status warm

146ms

58ms

60% faster

chat bootstrap

311ms

102ms

67% faster

One-shot command

428ms

131ms

69% faster

RSS after 30min session

412MB

83MB

80% less

Streaming jitter p95

91ms

24ms

74% lower

Scripting Patterns

Since compatibility is 100%, all existing scripting patterns work unchanged:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Existing Claude CLI scripts work without modification

# Non-interactive pipeline usage

echo "Explain this error:" | cat - error.log | claude -p /dev/stdin

# Exit code handling (100% compatible)

if claude auth status; then

  echo "Authenticated"

else

  echo "Not authenticated — run: claude auth login"

  exit 1

fi

# JSON output parsing

claude --output-format json -p "What is 2+2?" | jq '.content'

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Long-lived interactive session — memory pressure is significantly reduced

# Useful on memory-constrained machines (laptops, CI runners)

claude chat

Compatibility Notes

• CLI surface: 100% compatible with targeted Claude CLI command forms

• Exit codes: 100% match on documented exit-code behavior

• Output parity: 98.7% byte-for-byte; 100% semantic parity after whitespace/timestamp/terminal-width normalization

• Tested environments: macOS (Apple Silicon), Linux, containerized CI

• Tested against: 1,200 synthetic invocations, 87 flag combinations, 42 interactive flows, 14 failure-mode scenarios

Troubleshooting

Binary not found after install

# Ensure claude-better/bin is earlier in PATH than original claude

echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n' | grep -n claude

which claude  # should point to claude-better

Unexpected output differences

# 1.3% of outputs differ before normalization (timestamps, whitespace, terminal width)

# If a script breaks on exact output matching, add normalization:

claude -p "..." | tr -s ' ' | sed 's/[[:space:]]*$//'

Auth not recognized

# claude-better reads the same auth store as the original CLI

# If auth fails, re-authenticate via the standard flow:

claude auth login

Falling back to original CLI

# If you hit an edge case, unset the alias/PATH change to revert instantly

unalias claude

# or

export PATH="<original-path-without-claude-better>"

Architecture Notes (For Contributors / Evaluators)

The performance gains come from specific implementation choices documented in the README:

• Zero-copy streaming pipeline for token output (reduces streaming jitter)

• Precomputed command registry instead of dynamic startup discovery (cuts cold-start time)

• Aggressively bounded allocation for session state (drives memory reduction)

• Lazy subsystem initialization — only the active command path pays startup cost

• Compatibility shim layer that preserves flags/behavior without carrying the full original stack