circleci-cli

Preview release — this branch (main) tracks the new CLI rewrite. It is under active development and not yet stable. For the current stable CLI, see stable installation.

This is CircleCI's command-line application.

Documentation | Code of Conduct | Contribution Guidelines |

circleci is CircleCI's official command line tool. It is an agent-friendly CLI that brings CI runs, jobs, configuration, and other CircleCI features to the terminal right where you're already working.

The CLI is supported for users on circleci.com and CircleCI server; with support for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

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Preview: CLI v1.x now available

A ground-up rewrite of the agent-friendly CircleCI CLI is available for preview.

What's new

• circleci run — Full pipeline run management: list, get, trigger, cancel, and watch runs from the terminal. run watch blocks until a run completes and exits with a status code that reflects the result, making it easy to script CI gating.
• circleci deploy — View deployed components and versions across environments, and initialize CircleCI Deploys for a project.
• circleci dlc purge — Invalidate Docker layer caching for a project to force a fresh image build on the next run.
• circleci workflow — List, inspect, cancel, and rerun individual workflows.
• circleci pipeline — List and inspect pipelines.
• circleci envvar — Manage project environment variables.
• --json on every command — Every data-returning command supports --json for machine-readable, scriptable output.
• MCP server — First-class Model Context Protocol support: register the CLI as an MCP server in Claude, Cursor, or VS Code with a single command.
• Shell completions — Bash and Zsh completions via circleci completion.

Note: This is a preview release. Commands and flags may change before stable. Please open an issue with any feedback.

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Installation

Preview installation

Install the preview (v1.x) CLI via one of the following package managers:

Homebrew:

If you have the stable CLI installed:

brew uninstall circleci

Then:

brew install circleci-public/circleci/circleci@next

Snap (edge channel):

sudo snap install circleci --channel=edge
sudo snap connect circleci:password-manager-service

WinGet:

winget install --id CircleCI.CLI.Preview

Previous stable version

If you need the previous stable version, install via HomeBrew, Snap, WinGet, or Chocolatey:

Homebrew:

brew install circleci

Snap:

sudo snap install circleci

WinGet:

winget install --id CircleCI.CLI

Chocolatey:

choco install circleci-cli -y

Setup

Login

Run the following command to login to the CircleCI CLI:

circleci auth login

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

The CLI supports the MCP protocol. To enable it, run:

Claude:

circleci mcp claude enable # Enable in Claude desktop
claude mcp add-from-claude-desktop -s user # Add with current user scope

Cursor:

circleci mcp cursor enable

VS Code:

circleci mcp vscode enable

Development

Local

This repository makes use Task which can be installed (on MacOS) with:

$ brew install go-task/tap/go-task

Most other tools referenced in the Taskfile.yml are managed by the go.mod tool section.

See the full list of available tasks by running task -l, or, see the Taskfile.yml script.

# Run all static checks
task check
# Auto-fix static checks
task fix
# Run all the tests
task test

# Run the quick tests
task test -- -short ./...
# Run the quick tests for one package
task test -- -short ./internal/...

# Format all the code
task fmt
# Apply license headers
task license
# Tidy go.mod
task mod-tidy