CLI

Strife CLI is the code-first bridge between your project and Strife. It handles authentication, links a local project to a team, and deploys a code-defined content model to that team's templates — no manual template setup in Strife Studio required.

At a glance, the CLI lets you:

• Authenticate via a browser-based device flow (strife login) — no passwords or API keys typed into a terminal.
• Link a local project to a specific team (strife link), or bootstrap a brand-new project end to end in one step (strife / strife .).
• Define content types in TypeScript or JavaScript using defineType instead of building templates by hand in Strife Studio.
• Generate local TypeScript types for your content model (strife typegen) — see Typegen.
• Deploy your code-defined schema as real templates, ready to edit in Strife Studio (strife push).
• Upload media directly to a team's asset library (strife upload).

See Commands for the full command reference, Schemas for defineType/defineConfig, Typegen for generated types, and Authentication & Linking for how sign-in and project linking work under the hood.

Requirements

• Node.js 22 or later.
• An ESM-compatible project ("type": "module" in package.json, or ESM-flavored config files). The CLI itself is published as ESM.

The CLI does not assume any particular frontend framework. Everything in this section — authentication, linking, schema authoring, push, typegen — is plain Node.js tooling that works the same way regardless of what renders your site.

Install

Add the CLI and the Strife SDK to your project as dev dependencies:

npm install --save-dev @strifeapp/cli @strifeapp/strife

Install the CLI as a dev dependency, not globally. Global installs work too, but every command in this documentation uses npx strife ..., which finds your project's locally installed binary regardless of whether a global install also exists — the portable form to use in scripts, CI, and instructions you hand to teammates. A bare strife (no npx) only works if the CLI happens to be installed globally on that specific machine.

Quickstart

# 1. Authenticate — prints a URL to open (does not launch a browser for you)
npx strife login

# 2. Link this directory to a workspace + team
npx strife link

# 3. Declare a content type
mkdir schemas
cat > schemas/article.ts <<'EOF'
import { defineType, fields } from '@strifeapp/strife/schema';

export const article = defineType({
  name: 'articles',
  title: 'Article',
  type: 'document',
  fields: {
    heading: fields.text({ label: 'Heading', localizable: true }),
    body: fields.html({ label: 'Body' }),
  },
});
EOF

# 4. Point the CLI at your schema files
cat > strife.config.ts <<'EOF'
import { defineConfig, glob } from '@strifeapp/strife/schema';

export default defineConfig({
  schema: glob('./schemas/**/*.ts'),
});
EOF

# 5. Deploy it
npx strife push

After push completes, the Article type is a real, editable template in Strife Studio.

Bootstrapping a brand-new project

If you're starting from scratch rather than adding the CLI to an existing project, running the CLI with no arguments (or strife .) drives the whole setup interactively — sign-in, team selection or creation, an optional starter template, and writing the local credentials your app needs to connect to the team's database:

npm create @strife
# or, if @strifeapp/cli is already installed:
npx strife

Both invocations run the exact same logic. npm create @strife is a thin wrapper that (optionally) creates a target directory and then delegates straight into it.

What it does, step by step:

1. Signs you in (device flow), unless you already have a valid session.
2. Resolves a team: link to one you already have access to, or create a new one by name. (Skipped if the current directory is already linked.)
3. If the directory is empty and you're in an interactive terminal, optionally scaffolds a starter project — currently Astro-based starters only (tagged strife-starter under the nimble-initiatives GitHub org, discovered at runtime). If you're adding Strife to an existing project, run this from that project's directory instead: since it isn't empty, the starter prompt is skipped automatically and you go straight to linking.
4. Provisions a database client certificate for the team and writes a single STRIFE_SECRET value to .env, packing the connection details your app needs at runtime (database URLs, certificate, password). .env is added to .gitignore automatically.
5. If a starter was scaffolded, runs typegen generate and push for you and seeds some initial content; otherwise, it's on you to run strife push once you've written a schema.

Troubleshooting

A bare strife command works for me but not for a teammate. npm install --save-dev never puts a binary on your system PATH — only in that project's node_modules/.bin/. If strife (without npx) works for you specifically, you most likely also have @strifeapp/cli installed globally on your machine from something unrelated. Don't assume teammates have the same global install; use npx strife ... in any instructions you hand off, and it will resolve correctly whether or not a global install exists.

For live-preview issues (e.g. the preview panel not loading your local dev server), see Live preview — that's general Strife Studio behavior, not specific to the CLI.