I agree that the main weakness of the unix cli is in discoverability. This would require at least a limited standard interface (for declaring options and help)

I agree that the main weakness of the unix cli is in discoverability. This would require at least a limited standard interface (for declaring options and help) but it would not be enought for specific usages. So the overkill solution is real introspection abilities (from what I understood MS did this thanks to .net in its cli), but you loose simplicity and text everywhere.