CLI And Automation

The CLI is a developer and operator surface. It should not be mixed into the User Guide unless a user task specifically needs a command fallback. Deployment runbooks belong in Deploy & Run.

Use the CLI for:

• bootstrap and database operations;
• user and role management;
• project inspection and notifications;
• workflow validation, contracts, runs, change sets, hooks, and YAML export/import;
• job diagnostics and controls;
• operational report generation/retrieval and the installation diagnostic report (reports diagnostics), the file to attach to a bug report;
• release checks and upgrades;
• extension scaffolding and validation;
• test and quality gates.

For contributor verification, see Quality And Testing. For logs, backups, retention, workspace artifact pruning, and prompt debug traces, see Operations Internals.

Launchers

From the deployment or development host, as the checkout/deployment owner:

./flow-steward --help

The launcher uses Docker: Scalable selects its retained fs-cli runtime; Compact dispatches supported commands into its platform/product runtimes and refuses families requiring absent services. It is not a host-virtualenv command and is not supported from inside fs-app. Contributors who need a direct Python entry point for isolated parser tests must use the specific module documented by that test, not the installed launcher.

Developer usage principles

• Prefer UI docs for user workflows.
• Prefer CLI docs for repeatable setup, diagnostics, CI, and automation.
• Keep examples copy-pasteable.
• Show Docker and host variants when both are common.
• Use --help for discovery before relying on memory.

See CLI Reference for the command catalog.