Currently, before running any CLI commands one needs to manually authenticate on the browser -- which pretty much kills any chance of meaningful automation.

One (surely very sensible and common) use case is adding a full back up to one's shutdown routine. This cannot be done if it requires manual authentication because the user will fire the command and leave the computer, so he will not be able to authenticate. Placing the authentication in the beginning of the script only works if the script does not need to first add/remove/modify the files that will be backed up. Moreover, the token is only good for a very short period of time, often not long enough to finish everything that must come before backing up and then upload the files.

So the long-term stable solution is to find another way to authenticate that can be done with no user interaction, as many services do with keys saved in the computer.