[meta] CLI in Core community initiative

Background

Over the years, there have been several independent issues related to a command-line interface (CLI) including multiple ideas project and development issues. These have lacked any formal initiative including planning, scope and roadmap. At the start of 2026, a renewed effort has begun to get this done and we organized into a community-led initiative.

Problem

The reliance on third-party CLI tools including Drush is harder to maintain with updates to Drupal core dependencies, which makes it more difficult for Drupal users and contribution tool maintainers.

Proposed resolution

Improve the existing drupal CLI so that Drupal 12 has a first-class CLI that is extendable in core and contrib for use by site maintainers, developers, and site hosts.

Process and where to find it

An initial documentation guide is at CLI in Core Initiative, which will contain details as the initiative progresses.

We are organizing as a community-led initiative in the #cli-in-core Drupal Slack channel with regular synchronous meetings and follow-up asynchronous chat. Currently this is proposed as Wednesday 14:00 UTC to 14:30 UTC, but we also need/want a AEST/JST alternative time (proposed 23:00 UTC to 23:30 UTC).

We have a spreadsheet to identify stakeholders, track merge requests and issues, identify commands, log decisions, and capture questions and concerns.

This issue will be a parent issue for related issues being worked on.

Proposal roadmap

There are 4 proposed phases for this initiative:

1. Improve the drupal CLI by allowing discoverable commands, installed in bin-able, and robust.
   • A MVP using symfony/runtime that would allow existing commands in the drupal CLI to be used as-is, and allow experimentation in contrib.
   • Ideally ASAP and prior to Drupal Dev Days 2026
2. Identify and implement essential commands for site owners and developers ideally for 12.0.0 release.
   • CLI in core has commands that allow it be marketable and usable.
   • Ideally in 12.0.0, but that may only fall under Scenario #3. Otherwise this can be added during a minor release such as 12.1.0.
   • Best practices and documentation are established for command aliases, container-aware commands, and usage
3. Implement Drush 14.x commands suitable for core as-needed during Drupal 12 release cycle.
   • CLI in core has commands that are considered feature complete with commands being deprecated or introduced as necessary.
   • Most-likely a minor release in 2027.
4. Translatable commands

Not in scope

• Introduce drush/drush as a dependency to core.
• Implement every Drush or Drupal console command into core.
• Introduce a new system into core, only change and make discoverable an existing system.
• ...

Related work

• Contribution tools
  • DrupalForge
  • DDEV in the Cloud
  • DDEV
• Drush

Existing core features

core/scripts/drupal has limited functionality usable by core developers, Drupal demo users, and recipe developers. It is not extendable and only works with a non-bootstrapped site.

Open core issues

- Blocker: #3453474: CLI entry point in Drupal Core will complete Phase 1 of the initiative.
- #3313404: Use symfony/runtime for less bespoke bootstrap/compatibility with varied runtime environments

Contributed projects

Drush (off-site)

Team and resources

This list was originally populated based on Slack channel participation.

• moshe - Technical Lead (Drush maintainer)
• flux423 - Initiative PO (Thomas Scola - Bluefly.io)
• mradcliffe - Stakeholder, Implementer, Reviewer (Mentoring Working Group)
• tekNorah - PM
• greg.1.anderson - Architecture
• dpi - Architecture
• acbramley - Implementer
• chi - Reviewer
• kim.pepper - Implementer
• dww - Reviewer/Implementer
• longwave -
• quietone -
• larowlan - Reviewer
• bircher - Reviewer/Implementer
• penyaskito - Reviewer (locale)
• andypost -
• aaronmchale -
• Jack Franks -

Meeting pings

Please add or remove your Slack username to one of the lists below:

• Americas/Europe/Africa/India synchronous meeting folks to ping:
  • andypost, bircher, moshe, Jack Franks, mradcliffe, moshe, tekNorah, penyaskito, Thomas from Bluefly
• Australia/Oceania/Americas synchronous meeting folks to ping:
  • mradcliffe, moshe, quietone, larowlan, acbramley, longwave, dww