alt Hacker News > ChatGPT can’t run CLIs. Neither can Perplexity or the standard web version of Claude. Unless you are using a full-blown compute environment (like Perplexity Computer, Claude Cowork, Claude Code, or Codex), any skill that relies on a CLI is dead on arrival.
I can see Skills becoming a standard soon. But the concern still holds. When you publish a MCP you liberate the user out of installing anything. But with skills what happens if the skill running environment don't have access to the cli binary or if it isn't in PATH?
Yeah, regular web chat Claude and ChatGPT both have full container access (even on the free version, at least for ChatGPT) which can run CLI tools.
Both of them can even install CLI tools from npm and PyPI - they're limited in terms of what network services they can contact aside from those allow-listed ones though, so CLI tools in those environments won't be able to access the public web.
... unless you find the option buried deep in Claude for enabling additional hosts for the default container environment to talk to. That's a gnarly lethal trifecta exfiltration risk so I recommend against it, but the option is there!
More notes on ChatGPT's ability to install tools:
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/26/chatgpt-containers/