tu — ToolUniverse CLI¶

tu is the command-line interface for ToolUniverse. It mirrors the compact-mode MCP tools so you can discover and call tools directly from your shell.

tu <command> [options]

Output is human-readable by default. Add --json for pretty JSON or --raw for compact JSON (pipe-friendly).

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Commands¶

list¶

List available tools. Default view shows category counts; add --categories to list tools within a category.

tu list                               # category overview
tu list --categories uniprot          # tools in a category (case-insensitive)
tu list --mode basic --limit 20       # names + descriptions
tu list --mode custom --fields name type category

Modes: names, categories (default), basic, by_category, summary, custom

grep¶

Search tools by text or regex.

tu grep protein                       # substring search in names
tu grep protein --field description
tu grep '^UniProt' --mode regex
tu grep drug --limit 20

Fields: name (default), description, type, category

find¶

Find tools by natural-language query (keyword scoring, no API key needed).

tu find 'protein structure analysis'
tu find 'search for drug targets' --limit 5
tu find 'gene expression' --categories GTEx ENCODE

info¶

Show the schema for one or more tools.

tu info UniProt_get_entry_by_accession
tu info UniProt_get_entry_by_accession --detail description
tu info UniProt_get_entry_by_accession ChEMBL_get_molecule

run¶

Execute a tool. Arguments can be key=value pairs or a JSON string.

tu run UniProt_get_entry_by_accession accession=P12345
tu run list_tools mode=categories limit=5
tu run list_tools '{"mode": "categories"}'   # JSON also works

status¶

Show how many tools are loaded and the top categories.

tu status

build¶

Regenerate the static tool registry and the coding-API wrapper files (tools/*.py). Run this after adding or modifying built-in tools.

By default the wrapper files are written to .tooluniverse/coding_api/ in the current directory — the installed package in site-packages is never touched. Use --output to override.

tu build                              # → .tooluniverse/coding_api/
tu build --output ./my_tools          # → ./my_tools/
tu build --output src/tooluniverse/tools  # developer: update source tree

serve¶

Start the MCP stdio server — identical to tooluniverse.

tu serve

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Output flags¶

All commands accept --json (pretty JSON) and --raw (compact JSON):

tu list --json                        # pretty JSON
tu status --raw | jq '.top_categories'

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