"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

HERE Tracking CLI

A production-ready command-line interface for the HERE Tracking IoT asset tracking API. Track devices, manage geofences, view location traces, and handle notifications directly from your terminal.

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

Features

• Devices — List, get, and create tracking devices
• Traces — View location history and send position updates
• Geofences — Create and manage circular geofences
• Notifications — View tracking notifications and events
• 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/heretracking

Authentication Setup

Get your HERE API key from the HERE Developer Portal.

Configure the CLI

heretracking config set --api-key YOUR_API_KEY

Verify

heretracking config show

Commands

Configuration

heretracking config set --api-key <key>
heretracking config show

Devices

# List all devices
heretracking devices list

# Get a specific device
heretracking devices get <device-id>

# Create a new device
heretracking devices create --name "My Tracker" --description "Vehicle tracker"

Traces (Location History)

# Get location trace for a device
heretracking traces get <device-id>

# Filter by time range
heretracking traces get <device-id> --after 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z --before 2024-01-31T23:59:59Z

# Send a position update
heretracking traces send <device-id> --lat 52.5200 --lng 13.4050
heretracking traces send <device-id> --lat 52.5200 --lng 13.4050 --alt 34 --accuracy 10

Geofences

# List geofences
heretracking geofences list

# Get a specific geofence
heretracking geofences get <geofence-id>

# Create a circular geofence
heretracking geofences create \
  --name "Warehouse Zone" \
  --lat 52.5200 \
  --lng 13.4050 \
  --radius 500

Notifications

# List notifications
heretracking notifications list

# Get a specific notification
heretracking notifications get <notification-id>

JSON Output

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

# Get all devices as JSON
heretracking devices list --json

# Pipe to jq
heretracking traces get <device-id> --json | jq '.[].position'

# Get latest position
heretracking traces get <device-id> --limit 1 --json | jq '.[0]'

Contributing

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

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

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