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Onyx CLI

Release CLI PyPI

A CLI for querying enterprise knowledge from Onyx. Includes an interactive chat TUI for humans and non-interactive commands for AI agents and scripts.

Installation

pip install onyx-cli

Or with uv:

uv pip install onyx-cli

Standalone binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows (amd64/arm64) are also attached to each cli/v* GitHub release.

Setup

Run the interactive chat TUI — on first launch it will guide you through setup:

onyx-cli chat

This prompts for your Onyx server URL and personal access token (PAT), tests the connection, and saves config to ~/.config/onyx-cli/config.json (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/onyx-cli/config.json if set). To reconfigure later, use the /configure command inside the TUI.

Environment variables override config file values:

Variable Required Description
ONYX_SERVER_URL No Server origin or already-prefixed API base (default: https://cloud.onyx.app)
ONYX_API_PREFIX No API path prefix (default: /api); set to empty for direct backend access
ONYX_PAT No Personal access token for authentication (required if no config file)
ONYX_PERSONA_ID No Default agent/persona ID
ONYX_STREAM_MARKDOWN No Enable/disable progressive markdown rendering (true/false)
ONYX_SSH_HOST_KEY No Path to SSH host key for serve command

Usage

Interactive chat

onyx-cli chat
onyx-cli chat --no-stream-markdown
Flag Description
--no-stream-markdown Disable progressive markdown rendering during streaming

One-shot question

onyx-cli ask "What is our company's PTO policy?"
onyx-cli ask --agent-id 5 "Summarize this topic"
onyx-cli ask --json "Hello"
Flag Description
--agent-id <int> Agent ID to use (overrides default)
--json Output NDJSON stream events instead of plain text
--prompt <string> Question text (use with piped stdin context)
--quiet Buffer output and print once at end
--max-output <int> Max bytes before truncating (0 to disable)

List agents

onyx-cli agents
onyx-cli agents --json

Serve over SSH

# Start a public SSH endpoint for the CLI TUI
onyx-cli serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 2222

# Connect as a client
ssh your-host -p 2222

Clients can either:

  • paste a personal access token (PAT) at the login prompt, or
  • skip the prompt by sending ONYX_PAT over SSH:
export ONYX_PAT=your-pat
ssh -o SendEnv=ONYX_PAT your-host -p 2222

Useful hardening flags:

  • --host-key (default ~/.config/onyx-cli/host_ed25519)
  • --idle-timeout (default 15m)
  • --max-session-timeout (default 8h)
  • --rate-limit-per-minute (default 20)
  • --rate-limit-burst (default 40)
  • --rate-limit-cache (default 4096)

Commands

Command Mode Description
chat Interactive Launch the interactive chat TUI (requires terminal)
ask Agent / Script Ask a question and print the answer to stdout
agents Agent / Script List available agents (ID, name, description)
validate-config Agent / Script Check CLI configuration and server connectivity
install-skill Agent / Script Install the Onyx CLI agent skill file
experiments Agent / Script List experimental features and their status
serve Interactive Serve the Onyx TUI over SSH

Global Flags

Flag Description
--version, -v Print client and server version information
--debug Run in debug mode (verbose logging)

Agent / Non-Interactive Use

When called without a TTY (e.g., by an AI agent or piped into another command), onyx-cli adjusts its behavior:

  • No subcommand: prints help and exits 0 (instead of launching the TUI)
  • Results to stdout, progress/errors to stderr
  • No ANSI codes or interactive prompts
  • ask output truncated to 50000 bytes by default; full response saved to a temp file. Use --max-output 0 to disable.
  • search stdout stays valid JSON: over the limit, whole results are dropped and a truncation object carries metadata plus the temp file path of the full response.

Configuration

If a human has already run onyx-cli chat (which includes first-time setup), the CLI works out of the box — no additional setup needed. Environment variables can override the config file or serve as an alternative when no config file exists:

export ONYX_SERVER_URL="https://your-onyx-server.com"
export ONYX_PAT="your-pat"

Exit Codes

Code Name When
0 Success Command completed
1 General Unknown error
2 BadRequest Invalid arguments
3 NotConfigured Missing config/PAT
4 AuthFailure Invalid PAT (401/403)
5 Unreachable Server unreachable
6 RateLimited Server returned 429
7 Timeout Request timed out
8 ServerError Server returned 5xx
9 NotAvailable Feature/endpoint doesn't exist

Skill File

Install the bundled SKILL.md so AI coding agents can discover the CLI:

onyx-cli install-skill
onyx-cli install-skill --global
onyx-cli install-skill --copy
onyx-cli install-skill --agent claude-code
Flag Description
--global, -g Install to home directory instead of project
--copy Copy files instead of symlinking
--agent, -a Target specific agents (e.g. claude-code; can be repeated)

Slash Commands (in TUI)

Command Description
/help Show help message
/clear Clear chat and start a new session
/agent List and switch agents
/attach <path> Attach a file to next message
/sessions List recent chat sessions
/configure Re-run connection setup
/connectors Open connectors in browser
/settings Open settings in browser
/quit Exit Onyx CLI

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key Action
Enter Send message
Escape Cancel current generation
Ctrl+O Toggle source citations
Ctrl+D Quit (press twice)
Scroll / Shift+Up/Down Scroll chat history
Page Up / Page Down Scroll half page

Building from Source

Requires Go 1.24+.

cd cli
go build -o onyx-cli .

Development

# Run tests
go test ./...

# Build
go build -o onyx-cli .

# Lint
golangci-lint run ./...

Publishing to PyPI

The CLI is distributed as a Python package via PyPI. The build system uses hatchling with manygo to cross-compile Go binaries into platform-specific wheels.

CI release (recommended)

Tag a release and push — the release-cli.yml workflow builds wheels for all platforms and publishes to PyPI automatically:

tag --prefix cli

To do this manually:

git tag cli/v0.1.0
git push origin cli/v0.1.0

The workflow builds wheels for:

  • linux/amd64 manylinux
  • linux/amd64 musllinux
  • linux/arm64 manylinux
  • linux/arm64 musllinux
  • darwin/amd64
  • darwin/arm64
  • windows/amd64
  • windows/arm64

Manual release

Build a wheel locally with uv. Set GOOS and GOARCH to cross-compile for other platforms (Go handles this natively — no cross-compiler needed):

# Build for current platform
uv build --wheel

# Cross-compile for a different platform
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 uv build --wheel

# Build a musllinux-tagged Linux wheel for Alpine/musl environments
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=0 \
  ONYX_CLI_WHEEL_PLATFORM_TAG=musllinux_1_2_x86_64 \
  uv build --wheel

# Upload to PyPI
uv publish

Versioning

Versions are derived from git tags with the cli/ prefix (e.g. cli/v0.1.0). The tag is parsed by internal/_version.py and injected into the Go binary via -ldflags at build time.

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