Start here
Do everything from a terminal. Install, log in, and the commands you will actually use.
The CLI is a Node.js program called clikdeploy. It needs Node.js 18 or newer. There are two ways to install it.
The install script downloads the current release and installs it for you:
curl -fsSL https://clikdeploy.com/cli.sh | bash
Or install it with npm into your home directory, which needs no sudo:
npm install -g --prefix "$HOME/.local" clikdeploy-cli
Both routes put the binary in $HOME/.local/bin. If clikdeploy is not found afterwards, that directory is not on your PATH:
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
Check the install with clikdeploy --version.
Self-hosting ClikDeploy?
The CLI talks to https://clikdeploy.com by default. If you run your own platform, point it at yours once with clikdeploy config api-url https://your-platform.example.com. Log-in state is stored per URL, so you will need to log in again after changing it.
Every command except install needs an account.
clikdeploy login
That asks how you want to sign in: email and password, Google, GitHub, or by pasting an API key. To skip the question, name the provider up front:
clikdeploy login --google clikdeploy login --github
Both open a browser and wait for you to finish. On a machine with no browser — a remote box over SSH, say — add --return-url and the CLI prints the sign-in URL as JSON instead of trying to open one. There is also clikdeploy login --exchange <code>, which trades a one-time code for an API key.
Confirm who you are with clikdeploy whoami, and sign out with clikdeploy logout. New accounts can be created with clikdeploy signup.
API keys — long-lived tokens that identify your account without a password — are managed from the CLI too:
clikdeploy user api-keys create ci-key clikdeploy user api-keys list clikdeploy user api-keys revoke <id>
Replace <id> with the key ID shown by list. Note that the CLI reads its credentials from a config file written by clikdeploy login; there is no environment variable that injects a key into it. For CI and other unattended scripts, use the key as a bearer token against the REST API instead.
The CLI has a lot of commands. These are the ones that come up daily. Anywhere below, <app> is an app name or ID and <server> is a server name or ID.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
clikdeploy deploy [target] | Deploy the current directory, a GitHub URL, a Docker image, or an app name from the template catalogue. |
clikdeploy app list | List your apps and their current state. |
clikdeploy app show <app> | Everything about one app: server, domain, image, last deployment. |
clikdeploy app logs <app> -f | Container logs. -f follows new lines; -n 500 sets how many to show. |
clikdeploy app restart <app> | Restart the app in place. app stop and app start are the two halves of it. |
clikdeploy app env <app> | List environment variables. Set one with app env set <app> <KEY> <value>, and add --secret to mask it everywhere it is displayed. |
clikdeploy app domain <app> <domain> | Point a custom domain at the app. |
clikdeploy app rollback <app> | Go back to a previous deployment. --list-targets shows what you can roll back to. |
clikdeploy server list | List your connected servers. |
clikdeploy server connect agent <name> | Run on a server to connect it. Installs the agent that runs your containers. |
clikdeploy server status | Connection state and IP for every server, plus the error if one is unreachable. |
clikdeploy templates list | Browse apps you can deploy by name, such as n8n or gitea. |
clikdeploy diagnose <app> | When something is wrong: correlates status, events, logs and a likely next action. |
clikdeploy doctor | Checks the CLI itself — config, auth, whether the platform is reachable. |
In a terminal you get readable output. When output is piped or redirected — in a script, or in CI — every command switches to JSON automatically, so it can be parsed. --json and --human force one or the other. Add --debug to see the stack trace, HTTP status and response body when something fails.
The full command tree is discoverable from the CLI itself, and that is the most reliable reference there is:
clikdeploy --help clikdeploy app --help clikdeploy server --help
Beyond the daily commands, the remaining top-level groups are preview (short-lived environments per branch), deployment (inspect or cancel one deployment), model (deploy and run AI models), event, webhooks and integrations (wiring apps to each other and to outside services), blueprints (reusable app definitions), tools and agent (the agentic tool surface), teams, notifications, user, timeline, events, trace, search, repos, docker, init and config.
clikdeploy oauth registers OAuth clients so other software can sign people in with their ClikDeploy account. See ClikOAuth.