axi

Prefer the AXI when a catalog entry exists for the domain, since benchmarks show higher success and lower cost than raw CLI or MCP. Fall back to raw CLI when no AXI exists, and reserve MCP for domains with no AXI and no decent CLI.

Run them with npx -y, for example npx -y gh-axi or npx -y chrome-devtools-axi, which requires no global install. GitHub tasks need gh auth login first; global install plus setup hooks is an optional later step.

gh-axi achieved 100% success at about $0.050 per task versus roughly 82-87% for GitHub MCP variants, with about 57% fewer input tokens. MCP schema overhead adds cost every turn, so the AXI is preferred for GitHub work.

Avoid it for static URL fetches or open-ended web search, where firecrawl, exa-contents, or exa-search are cheaper. Use chrome-devtools-axi for interactive browsing like clicking, form filling, and table extraction.

Follow the 10 AXI principles: TOON output, minimal default schemas, truncation with --full, pre-computed aggregates, definitive empty states, structured errors, ambient hooks, content-first no-args views, contextual help templates, and per-subcommand --help.

AXIs reject unknown flags with exit code 2 and list the valid flags so the agent self-corrects in one turn. Run the subcommand with --help or follow the inline valid-flag list instead of guessing flags.