CLI Commands

The arcane-cli commands you’ll use most often, grouped by task. For the full flag list run arcane-cli <command> --help, and for the complete command tree run arcane-cli --help.

Set your server URL and sign in first. See CLI Configuration.

Sign in

Log in interactively with the device-code flow:

arcane-cli auth login

Check who you’re signed in as, or sign out:

arcane-cli auth me

arcane-cli auth logout

For CI, use an API key or a federated credential instead of an interactive login — see Federated Credentials.

Choose an environment

Most resource commands act on your default environment. Set it once:

arcane-cli environments switch

Or override it for a single command with --env:

arcane-cli containers list --env 2

List environments and check one is reachable:

arcane-cli environments list

arcane-cli environments test 2

Containers

arcane-cli containers list

arcane-cli containers get my-container

arcane-cli containers restart my-container

Show which containers have a newer image available:

arcane-cli containers updates

Pull the newer image and recreate the container:

arcane-cli containers update my-container

Projects

arcane-cli projects list

Bring a project up, or take it down:

arcane-cli projects up my-project

arcane-cli projects down my-project

Pull the latest images and restart:

arcane-cli projects redeploy my-project

Tip

projects up, projects redeploy, and projects pull print the raw Docker output line by line as the operation runs, so you see the same thing you would from docker compose directly. These commands allow up to 30 minutes for large pulls and builds.

Remove a project and its resources:

arcane-cli projects destroy my-project

Warning

destroy removes the project’s files from disk by default. Pass --remove-files=false to keep them. Volumes are kept unless you add --remove-volumes.

Images and volumes

arcane-cli images list

arcane-cli images pull nginx:latest

Reclaim space:

arcane-cli images prune

arcane-cli volumes sizes

Find out what’s using a volume before you remove it:

arcane-cli volumes usage my-volume

GitOps

arcane-cli gitops list

Check a sync’s state, then run it now:

arcane-cli gitops status my-sync

arcane-cli gitops sync my-sync

System

Free up space across the environment:

arcane-cli system prune

Check whether an Arcane upgrade is available, and apply it:

arcane-cli system upgrade --check

arcane-cli system upgrade

Turn a docker run command into Compose:

arcane-cli system convert "docker run -d -p 8080:80 nginx"

Vulnerabilities

Get an overview of scan results, or the full findings list:

arcane-cli images vulnerabilities summary

arcane-cli images vulnerabilities list

Scan an image now, or show one image’s findings:

arcane-cli images vulnerabilities scan nginx:latest

arcane-cli images vulnerabilities image nginx:latest

Silence a CVE you’ve reviewed (and list or undo ignores with ignored / unignore):

arcane-cli images vulnerabilities ignore CVE-2026-1234

System backups

Manage Arcane system backups from the terminal:

arcane-cli admin backups list

arcane-cli admin backups create

arcane-cli admin backups restore <backup-id>

There are also subcommands for retention policies (policies), the recovery key (recovery), uploading a local backup to S3 (upload), and finding S3 restore points not in the database (discover).

Activities and webhooks

Follow what the server is doing:

arcane-cli activities list

arcane-cli activities get <activity-id>

Manage webhooks, or fire one by its token:

arcane-cli webhooks list

arcane-cli webhooks trigger <token>

Updater

Inspect the automatic updater and trigger a run:

arcane-cli updater status

arcane-cli updater run

arcane-cli updater history

History shows one row per resource — resource, type, status, whether the update was applied, and when it started. Use --limit (-n) to change how many entries you get back; the default is 50.

Update the CLI

arcane-cli self-update run

Switch between the stable and next release channels:

arcane-cli self-update channel next

To check release signatures before updating, turn on the signature verification preview.

Diagnose problems and set up your shell

Diagnose connectivity and configuration problems:

arcane-cli doctor

Install shell completion:

arcane-cli completion zsh

Generate secrets and certificates for a new install:

arcane-cli generate secret

Scripting

Every command accepts --output json (or the shorthand --json), which makes the CLI easy to pair with jq:

arcane-cli containers list --json | jq -r ".data[].name"

In JSON mode, stdout carries exactly one JSON document. Status messages and progress go to stderr. List commands print the server’s paginated response with data and pagination. Other commands print only the resource or result. images pull, images build, and the streaming projects commands print an array of the server’s progress frames once the operation finishes.

Commands that remove or reset resources ask for confirmation first. Add --yes to skip confirmation prompts in unattended scripts. On delete commands, --force skips the prompt too.

Important

Without a terminal, or with --json, a prompt fails with confirmation required: re-run with --yes instead of waiting for input. Piping y into the command does not answer it.

List commands are paginated. --all (-a) returns every item, ignoring pagination — it cannot be combined with --limit or --start:

arcane-cli containers list --all --json

Note

--all means “ignore pagination”, not “include stopped containers”. containers list already returns containers in every state.

Renamed flags

Some flags were renamed so they no longer clash with the global --env, --config, and --output flags, or to replace a separate off switch. The old names still work but print a deprecation warning, and they will be removed in v3. Update your scripts to the new names:

Command	Old flag	New flag
containers create	--env	--env-var, -e
admin notifications settings set	--config	--provider-config
templates download	--output	--output-file, -o
environments create, environments update, registries create, registries update, templates registries update, admin federated update, admin backups policies update	--disabled	--enabled=false