CLI Reference

The tide-commander CLI manages the server process lifecycle. All commands run against the background daemon unless --foreground is passed.

Installation

# Run without installing (recommended for quick starts)
bunx tide-commander

# Install globally
npm i -g tide-commander@latest

Subcommands

start

Start the Tide Commander server (default command — runs when you call tide-commander with no subcommand).

tide-commander start [flags]

By default the server daemonises into the background. Use --foreground to keep it in the terminal.

stop

Stop the background server process.

tide-commander stop

status

Check whether the background server is running and show its PID and port.

tide-commander status

logs

Print recent server output. Useful for diagnosing startup failures.

tide-commander logs [--lines N] [--follow]

Flag	Default	Description
--lines N	50	Number of log lines to show
--follow	off	Stream logs in real time (like tail -f)

Flags (for start)

Flag	Default	Description
--port N	5174	HTTP port the server listens on
--host HOST	localhost	Bind address. Use 0.0.0.0 to expose on the network
--foreground	off	Run in the foreground instead of daemonising
--generate-auth-token	off	Generate a random AUTH_TOKEN, print it, and exit

Environment variable overrides

All flags can be set in .env (loaded from the working directory or ~/.tide-commander/.env). Environment variables take precedence over config file defaults but are overridden by explicit CLI flags.

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	5174	Server port
HOST	localhost	Bind address
AUTH_TOKEN	—	Bearer token for API access. Required for network exposure
HTTPS_CERT	—	Path to TLS certificate file
HTTPS_KEY	—	Path to TLS private key file
LOG_LEVEL	info	Log verbosity: debug, info, warn, error
DATA_DIR	~/.local/share/tide-commander	Override the data directory

Generating an auth token

Run tide-commander --generate-auth-token to print a cryptographically random token. Copy it into your .env as AUTH_TOKEN=<value>.

Typical workflows

# Start on default port, background mode
tide-commander start

# Start on a custom port, expose to LAN
tide-commander start --port 8080 --host 0.0.0.0

# Watch logs while developing
tide-commander logs --follow

# Stop cleanly
tide-commander stop

For HTTPS setup (required for cross-origin mobile access and service workers), see HTTPS & Auth.