"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

CallFire CLI

A production-ready command-line interface for the CallFire SMS and voice broadcasting API. Send text messages, make voice calls, manage campaigns, and handle contacts directly from your terminal.

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

Features

• Calls — List, view, and send voice calls with text-to-speech
• Texts — Send and manage SMS messages
• Campaigns — View voice and text broadcast campaigns
• Contacts — Manage your contact list
• Account — Check account info and credit balance
• JSON output — All commands support --json for scripting and piping
• Colorized output — Clean, readable terminal output with chalk

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/callfire

Authentication Setup

Use your CallFire API credentials (username and password) from the CallFire Developer Portal.

Configure the CLI

callfire config set --username YOUR_USERNAME --password YOUR_PASSWORD

Commands

Configuration

callfire config set --username <user> --password <pass>
callfire config show

Voice Calls

# List all calls
callfire calls list

# Filter by status
callfire calls list --status FINISHED

# Get a specific call
callfire calls get <call-id>

# Send a voice call (text-to-speech)
callfire calls send \
  --to +12125551234 \
  --from +18005551234 \
  --message "Hello, this is an automated message." \
  --machine-message "Please leave a message after the tone."

SMS Text Messages

# List texts
callfire texts list

# Get a specific text
callfire texts get <text-id>

# Send an SMS
callfire texts send \
  --to +12125551234 \
  --from +18005551234 \
  --message "Your appointment is confirmed for tomorrow at 3pm."

Campaigns

# List call campaigns
callfire campaigns list --type call

# List text campaigns
callfire campaigns list --type text

# Get a specific campaign
callfire campaigns get <campaign-id> --type call

Contacts

# List contacts
callfire contacts list

# Get a specific contact
callfire contacts get <contact-id>

# Create a contact
callfire contacts create \
  --first-name "John" \
  --last-name "Doe" \
  --mobile-phone +12125551234 \
  --email [email protected]

Account

# View account info
callfire account info

# Check credit balance
callfire account credits

JSON Output

All commands support --json for machine-readable output:

# Get all texts as JSON
callfire texts list --json

# Get call details
callfire calls get <id> --json | jq '{id, to: .toNumber, from: .fromNumber, status: .state}'

# Check balance
callfire account credits --json | jq '.credits'

Contributing

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

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

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