Help flag produces usage information for every command

A CLI without help text is a CLI no one can use. Users land on your tool via npx mytool or pip install, type --help out of reflex, and either see nothing or see a framework-default skeleton. They close the terminal and find a competitor. Missing descriptions also break shell autocomplete hints, man-page generation, and docs scrapers that harvest --help output. This is a user-experience failure severe enough to zero out adoption regardless of how good the underlying logic is.

Add a description to every .command(), cobra.Command, @cli.command(), or #[command] definition, and verify --help and -h produce usage text on the root command plus every subcommand. Ship descriptions in the same file the command is registered in — for example src/cli/commands/deploy.ts:

program
  .command('deploy')
  .description('Deploy the current project to production')
  .action(deploy)

• ID: cli-quality.command-structure.help-flag

• Severity: critical

• What to look for: Count all commands and subcommands in the CLI. For each, check that --help and -h produce usage information for the root command and every subcommand. In commander, verify .description() is set on every .command() call. In yargs, check that .describe() or .usage() is configured. In click/typer, verify docstrings exist on command functions. In cobra, check Short and Long fields on every cobra.Command. In clap, verify about or long_about on every Command or #[command(about = "...")] attribute.

• Pass criteria: Every registered command and subcommand has a description that will appear in --help output. The root command's --help lists all available subcommands. No command produces an empty or framework-default-only help screen — 100% of commands and subcommands must display help text when invoked with --help. Report the count: "X commands found, all Y respond to --help."

• Fail criteria: Any command is missing a description (will show blank in help output), or the root command does not list subcommands, or --help/-h is not wired up (manually overridden or disabled).

• Skip (N/A) when: All checks skip when no CLI entry point is detected. This specific check never skips otherwise — every CLI must have help text.

• Cross-reference: The subcommand-pattern check verifies the command hierarchy that --help should document.

• Detail on fail: "3 of 7 subcommands have no .description() set — 'deploy', 'rollback', 'config' will show blank help text" or "Root command help does not list available subcommands — only shows global flags"

• Remediation: Help text is how users discover your CLI's capabilities. Every command needs a description:

  // commander (Node.js)
  program
    .command('deploy')
    .description('Deploy the current project to production')
    .option('-e, --env <environment>', 'Target environment', 'production')
    .action(deploy)
  

  # click (Python)
  @cli.command()
  @click.argument('target')
  def deploy(target):
      """Deploy the current project to the specified target."""
      pass
  

  // cobra (Go)
  var deployCmd = &cobra.Command{
      Use:   "deploy [target]",
      Short: "Deploy the current project",
      Long:  "Deploy the current project to the specified target environment.",
      RunE:  runDeploy,
  }