Go CLI for checking best-effort domain availability.

This tool reports available when RDAP/WHOIS indicates the domain is not currently registered.

If you enable a registrar check (currently Porkbun), results can also include:

• buyable: whether the registrar says you can register it right now
• premium, price, regular_price, min_duration

go run ./cmd/dothuntcli --help

Build a binary:

go build -o dothuntcli ./cmd/dothuntcli
./dothuntcli --help

Install via Homebrew tap:

brew tap benithors/tap
brew install benithors/tap/dothuntcli

Release process for Homebrew updates: docs/releasing-homebrew.md.

./dothuntcli check openai.com example-this-is-probably-free-123.com

Read newline-delimited domains from stdin too:

printf "openai.com\nexample.com\n" | ./dothuntcli --ndjson check

Write a single JSON array and skip registrar enrichment:

./dothuntcli --format json --registrar none check example.com

If you set PORKBUN_API_KEY and PORKBUN_SECRET_API_KEY, --registrar auto (default) will enrich results with buyable/price info.

On macOS, persistent local credentials are read from Keychain. dothuntcli looks for two generic password items:

security add-generic-password -U -s "dothuntcli/porkbun" -a "api-key" -w
security add-generic-password -U -s "dothuntcli/porkbun" -a "secret-api-key" -w

Keep -w as the final option so security prompts for the secret. Avoid passing secrets directly on the command line, where they can be saved in shell history.

As a compatibility fallback, dothuntcli also reads a dotenv-style file from the user config directory:

PORKBUN_API_KEY=...
PORKBUN_SECRET_API_KEY=...

On macOS this defaults to ~/Library/Application Support/dothuntcli/porkbun.env; on Linux it defaults to ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/dothuntcli/porkbun.env. Override it with DOTHUNTCLI_PORKBUN_CREDENTIALS_FILE.

You can also force it:

./dothuntcli --ndjson --registrar porkbun check openai.com

--format auto (default) chooses:

• table when stdout is a TTY
• ndjson otherwise

Formats:

• ndjson: one JSON object per line (best for agents)
• json: a single JSON array (good for tools expecting one JSON document)
• plain: stable tab-separated lines (domain, status, method, confidence)
• table: human-readable table

Each line is a JSON object like:

{
  "domain": "ki-agentur.com",
  "label": "ki-agentur",
  "tld": "com",
  "status": "available",
  "registered": false,
  "method": "rdap",
  "confidence": "high",
  "registrar": "porkbun",
  "buyable": true,
  "premium": false,
  "price": "10.29",
  "detail": "rdap 404",
  "checked_at": "2026-02-13T21:24:44.339841Z",
  "duration_ms": 327,
  "rdap_status": "available",
  "rdap_reason": "rdap 404",
  "rdap_url": "https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/ki-agentur.com",
  "rdap_http_status": 404
}

Notes:

• rdap_* fields appear when RDAP was attempted (including rdap_status/rdap_reason/rdap_error).
• whois_* fields appear when WHOIS was attempted (including whois_status/whois_reason/whois_error).