CAIP Discussion: CLI Wallet Protocol (CWP)

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CLI Wallet Protocol (CWP)

A standard protocol for CLI applications to discover and interact with wallet providers through executable plugins on PATH.

Problem

CLI-based blockchain tools hardcode support for specific wallet providers, creating tight coupling. There's no CLI equivalent of EIP-6963 (browser wallet discovery).

Proposed Solution

• Binary naming convention: wallet-<name> executables on PATH
• JSON stdin/stdout communication: Avoids shell escaping issues
• Standard operations: info, accounts, sign-message, sign-typed-data, sign-transaction, send-transaction
• Semantic exit codes: Enable orchestration and error handling
• Orchestrator CLI: wallet binary discovers providers and delegates

Inspiration

• EIP-6963 — Browser wallet discovery
• git credential helpers — CLI plugin discovery pattern

Reference Implementation

• Orchestrator: @anthropic-ai/wallet-cli
• WalletConnect adapter: wallet-walletconnect in @walletconnect/cli-sdk
• Consumer: nansen-cli x402 auto-payment

The full draft spec will be submitted as a PR.