"Six months ago, everyone was talking about MCPs. And I was like, screw MCPs. Every MCP would be better as a CLI."

— Peter Steinberger, Founder of OpenClaw Watch on YouTube (~2:39:00) | Lex Fridman Podcast #491

Apideck CRM CLI

A production-ready command-line interface for the Apideck unified CRM API. Manage contacts, companies, leads, notes, and activities across all your CRM integrations from your terminal.

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial CLI tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Apideck.

Features

• Contacts — List, get, create, and delete CRM contacts
• Companies — Manage company records
• Leads — Track and manage sales leads
• Notes — Create and retrieve notes
• Activities — Log calls, meetings, emails, and tasks
• JSON output — All commands support --json for scripting
• Colorized output — Clean, readable terminal output

Why CLI > MCP

MCP servers are complex, stateful, and require a running server process. A CLI is:

• Simpler — Just a binary you call directly
• Composable — Pipe output to jq, grep, awk, and other tools
• Scriptable — Use in shell scripts, CI/CD pipelines, cron jobs
• Debuggable — See exactly what's happening with --json flag
• AI-friendly — AI agents can call CLIs just as easily as MCPs, with less overhead

Installation

npm install -g @ktmcp-cli/apideck

Configuration

apideck config set --api-key YOUR_API_KEY --app-id YOUR_APP_ID
apideck config set --consumer-id YOUR_CONSUMER_ID
apideck config set --service-id hubspot  # Optional: target specific CRM
apideck config show

Get your API credentials from app.apideck.com.

Commands

Contacts

apideck contacts list
apideck contacts list --limit 50
apideck contacts get <id>
apideck contacts create --first-name John --last-name Doe --email [email protected]
apideck contacts create --first-name Jane --company "Acme Corp" --phone "+1234567890"
apideck contacts delete <id>

Companies

apideck companies list
apideck companies get <id>
apideck companies create --name "Acme Corp" --industry Technology --website https://acme.com

Leads

apideck leads list
apideck leads get <id>
apideck leads create --name "John Doe" --email [email protected] --company "Acme Corp"
apideck leads create --name "Jane Smith" --status "New" --source "Website"

Notes

apideck notes list
apideck notes get <id>
apideck notes create --content "Spoke with customer about renewal" --contact-id <id>

Activities

apideck activities list
apideck activities get <id>
apideck activities create --subject "Follow-up call" --type call --contact-id <id>
apideck activities create --subject "Demo meeting" --type meeting --start "2024-03-15T10:00:00Z"

JSON Output

apideck contacts list --json | jq '.[] | {id, name: (.first_name + " " + .last_name)}'
apideck leads list --json | jq '.[] | select(.status == "New")'

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at github.com/ktmcp-cli/apideck.

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

Part of the KTMCP CLI project — replacing MCPs with simple, composable CLIs.