Skip to content

CLI Overview

The Paperclip CLI handles instance setup, diagnostics, and control-plane operations.

Terminal window
pnpm paperclipai --help

All commands support:

FlagDescription
--data-dir <path>Local Paperclip data root (isolates from ~/.paperclip)
--api-base <url>API base URL
--api-key <token>API authentication token
--context <path>Context file path
--profile <name>Context profile name
--jsonOutput as JSON

Company-scoped commands also accept --company-id <id>.

For clean local instances, pass --data-dir on the command you run:

Terminal window
pnpm paperclipai run --data-dir ./tmp/paperclip-dev

Store defaults to avoid repeating flags:

Terminal window
# Set defaults
pnpm paperclipai context set --api-base http://localhost:3100 --company-id <id>
# View current context
pnpm paperclipai context show
# List profiles
pnpm paperclipai context list
# Switch profile
pnpm paperclipai context use default

To avoid storing secrets in context, use an env var:

Terminal window
pnpm paperclipai context set --api-key-env-var-name PAPERCLIP_API_KEY
export PAPERCLIP_API_KEY=...

Context is stored at ~/.paperclip/context.json.

The CLI has two categories:

  1. Setup commands — instance bootstrap, diagnostics, configuration
  2. Control-plane commands — issues, agents, approvals, activity