"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

smart-me CLI

A production-ready command-line interface for the smart-me energy monitoring API. Monitor electricity consumption, read meter values, and manage energy devices directly from your terminal.

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial CLI tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by smart-me AG.

Features

• Devices — List and inspect energy meters and smart devices
• Values — Get live power readings (watts, voltage, current, power factor)
• Meters — Read energy consumption counters (kWh)
• Users — Manage user accounts
• 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/smartme

Authentication Setup

Use your smart-me account credentials (username and password).

Configure the CLI

smartme config set --username YOUR_EMAIL --password YOUR_PASSWORD

Verify

smartme config show

Commands

Configuration

smartme config set --username <email> --password <pass>
smartme config show

Devices (Meters)

# List all devices
smartme devices list

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

# Find device by serial number
smartme devices find --serial 12345678

Values (Live Readings)

# Get current live values
smartme values get <device-id>

# Get historical values
smartme values history <device-id>
smartme values history <device-id> --date 2024-01-15T12:00:00

Meters (Energy Consumption)

# Get meter/energy consumption values
smartme meters values <device-id>

# Get counter readings (OBIS)
smartme meters counters <device-id>

Users

# Get current user info
smartme users me

# List all users
smartme users list

JSON Output

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

# Monitor all devices
smartme devices list --json

# Get live power consumption
smartme values get <device-id> --json | jq '.ActivePower'

# Get energy counter reading
smartme meters values <device-id> --json | jq '.CounterReading'

Examples

Monitor energy consumption

# Check current power draw across all meters
smartme devices list --json | jq '.[].ActivePower'

# Get detailed live readings for a meter
smartme values get <device-id>

Track energy usage

# Get current counter (kWh)
smartme meters values <device-id> --json | jq '.CounterReading'

# Get historical counter at specific time
smartme values history <device-id> --date 2024-01-01T00:00:00 --json

Contributing

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

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

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