openaccountants CLI

One command to drop accountant-verified OpenAccountants tax skills into your AI agent — no clone, no hunting for the right folder, no loading all 700 skills when you only need one country.

npx openaccountants add malta

That fetches only Malta's skills and writes them where your agent reads them.

Commands

npx openaccountants add <jurisdiction>   # install one jurisdiction's skills
npx openaccountants connect              # print MCP setup for live tooling
npx openaccountants list                 # list installable jurisdiction codes

Jurisdictions accept ISO codes, country names, US states, and Canadian provinces — all resolved server-side:

npx openaccountants add US-CA      # US federal + California
npx openaccountants add CA-ON      # Canada federal + Ontario
npx openaccountants add germany    # name works too

Where it installs

The CLI auto-detects your agent (override with --agent):

| Agent | Detected by | Destination | |-------|-------------|-------------| | claude | ~/.claude/ exists | ~/.claude/skills/openaccountants-<code>/SKILL.md — loads as a native skill | | cursor | .cursor/ in cwd | .cursor/rules/openaccountants-<code>.md | | codex | AGENTS.md in cwd | ./openaccountants-skills/<code>.md (+ a reference added to AGENTS.md) | | generic | fallback | ./openaccountants-skills/<code>.md |

Project-local signals (.cursor, AGENTS.md) take precedence over the global Claude folder. The detected agent is always printed back; force a different one with --agent claude|cursor|codex|generic or pick a directory with --dir <path>.

Each install drops a small .openaccountants.json next to the skills recording the jurisdiction, fetch date, and source URL.

Options

| Flag | Effect | |------|--------| | --agent <name> | Force the target agent | | --dir <path> | Write to a specific directory | | --version | Print the CLI version |

How it works

The CLI is a thin client over the public bundle API (GET /api/bundle/<code>). It does read-only fetches and local file writes — no auth, no account, no server to run, and it phones home to nothing. Set OPENACCOUNTANTS_URL to point at a different host (e.g. local dev).

Live tooling

add installs static skill files. For live tools (current rates, requesting an accountant review), connect the MCP server:

npx openaccountants connect

Disclaimer

Not tax advice. Skills are labelled accountant-verified (a named licensed practitioner signed off) or research-verified (drafted from authoritative sources, awaiting verification). Always have a qualified professional review output before filing.