@dmbaturin @mickvav yes, definitely a very good point, and I'm guessing that same new VyOS shell would then be callable from the changed-to Unix shell (e.g. cli -c "show configuration commands | match blah") ... nice.

FWIW, I definitely prefer JunOS-like (issue command to enter VyOS shell) behavior and agree with the comments about remote configuration, such as with Ansible. This makes mass configuration, change-controls, and backups much more like other *nix based installs. It also makes munging the VyOS command output available out-of-the-box on the VyOS install, i.e. IMO it would be much easier to call VyOS shell sniplets from scripts in bash, tcsh, python, perl, etc, than to deal with getting out of the more captive shell back to a "real" shell for a custom script, cron job, etc.