Stainless CLI

Caution

The CLI is unstable and the API may change. Please feel free to use it locally, but don't build scripts against it.

The official CLI for the Stainless REST API.

It is generated with Stainless.

Installation

Installing with Homebrew

brew tap stainless-api/tap
brew install stl

Installing with Go

To test or install the CLI locally, you need Go version 1.22 or later installed.

go install 'github.com/stainless-api/stainless-api-cli/cmd/stl@latest'

Once you have run go install, the binary is placed in your Go bin directory:

• Default location: $HOME/go/bin (or $GOPATH/bin if GOPATH is set)
• Check your path: Run go env GOPATH to see the base directory

If commands aren't found after installation, add the Go bin directory to your PATH:

# Add to your shell profile (.zshrc, .bashrc, etc.)
export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

Running Locally

After cloning the git repository for this project, you can use the scripts/run script to run the tool locally:

./scripts/run args...

Usage

The CLI follows a resource-based command structure:

stl [resource] <command> [flags...]

stl builds create \
  --project stainless \
  --revision main \
  --allow-empty \
  --branch branch \
  --commit-message commit_message \
  --enable-ai-commit-message \
  --target-commit-messages '{cli: cli, csharp: csharp, go: go, java: java, kotlin: kotlin, node: node, openapi: openapi, php: php, python: python, ruby: ruby, sql: sql, terraform: terraform, typescript: typescript}' \
  --target node

For details about specific commands, use the --help flag.

Global Flags

• --help - Show command line usage

• --debug - Enable debug logging (includes HTTP request/response details)

• --version, -v - Show the CLI version

• --base-url - Use a custom API backend URL

• --format - Change the output format (auto, explore, json, jsonl, pretty, raw, yaml)

• --format-error - Change the output format for errors (auto, explore, json, jsonl, pretty, raw, yaml)

• --transform - Transform the data output using GJSON syntax

• --transform-error - Transform the error output using GJSON syntax

Passing files as arguments

To pass files to your API, you can use the @myfile.ext syntax:

stl <command> --arg @abe.jpg

Files can also be passed inside JSON or YAML blobs:

stl <command> --arg '{image: "@abe.jpg"}'
# Equivalent:
stl <command> <<YAML
arg:
  image: "@abe.jpg"
YAML

If you need to pass a string literal that begins with an @ sign, you can escape the @ sign to avoid accidentally passing a file.

stl <command> --username '\@abe'

Explicit encoding

For JSON endpoints, the CLI tool does filetype sniffing to determine whether the file contents should be sent as a string literal (for plain text files) or as a base64-encoded string literal (for binary files). If you need to explicitly send the file as either plain text or base64-encoded data, you can use @file://myfile.txt (for string encoding) or @data://myfile.dat (for base64-encoding). Note that absolute paths will begin with @file:// or @data://, followed by a third / (for example, @file:///tmp/file.txt).

stl <command> --arg @data://file.txt

Workspace Configuration

The CLI supports workspace configuration to avoid repeatedly specifying the project name. When you run a command, the CLI will:

1. Check if a project name is provided via command-line flag
2. If not, look for a .stainless/workspace.json file in the current directory or any parent directory
3. Use the project name from the workspace configuration if found

Initializing a Workspace

You can initialize a workspace configuration with:

stl workspace init --project your-project-name

If you don't provide the --project flag, you'll be prompted to enter a project name.

Additionally, when you run a command with a project name flag in an interactive terminal, the CLI will offer to initialize a workspace configuration for you.