arcli

The command line for Arc. Query and operate your instances from a terminal, a script, or CI.

arcli is the operator-facing client for Arc, the open, SQL-native time-series database. It talks to one or more Arc servers over the same HTTP API that Arc Launchpad uses from the browser, and replaces hand-written curl calls with a workflow modelled on influx, kubectl and clickhouse-client: named connections, one active at a time, overridable per command.

# Install (macOS + Linux)
brew install basekick-labs/tap/arcli

# Save a connection and make it the active one
arcli config create --name local --endpoint http://localhost:8000 --token YOUR-TOKEN --activate

# Check it
arcli ping

# Query
arcli query "SELECT host, avg(usage) FROM cpu GROUP BY 1"

# Write line protocol from stdin
echo "cpu,host=web-1 usage=0.63 $(date +%s)000000000" | arcli write

What arcli is (and isn't)

arcli connects to Arc servers you already run. It never starts Arc, stores none of your data, and keeps exactly one file on disk: ~/.arcli/config.toml with your connection profiles (mode 0600).

Every command is one request to the configured server, so what a token is allowed to do in Arc is what arcli can do with it: a read-only token can query but not write, and the admin commands (import, auth token, every cq subcommand, retention create|update|delete|execute, delete, backup, logs, compaction trigger, cluster node remove) need an admin token.

What you can do

• Query: arcli query with table, JSON, CSV or Arrow output, SQL from an argument, a file or stdin, and --estimate to size a result before running it
• Write and import: line protocol, MessagePack or JSON on stdin or from a file; bulk import of CSV, line protocol, Parquet and TLE files
• Databases: list, show, create and drop databases; list measurements
• Tokens: auth whoami and the full token lifecycle (create, rotate, revoke, delete, permissions, expiry)
• Data lifecycle: retention policies and continuous queries with dry runs and execution history; predicate delete
• Backups: create, list, inspect, restore and delete server-side backups
• Operations: cluster and compaction status, scheduler status, server logs, ping
• Shell completion for bash, zsh, fish and PowerShell, with connection names completed from your config file, plus man pages

How it fits together

┌──────────┐   HTTP + Bearer token   ┌──────────────┐
│ terminal │ ──── arcli ───────────▶ │  Arc server  │
│  or CI   │                         │ (your data)  │
└──────────┘                         └──────────────┘
      │
      ▼
~/.arcli/config.toml    connection profiles (endpoint + token), one active

arcli holds only the connection records. It never contacts Basekick or any third party; see Privacy for the one identifier it sends to your own Arc servers.

Compatibility and versions

arcli follows Arc's calendar versioning (26.09.1) and talks to Arc 26.06 or newer. A newer arcli against an older Arc degrades gracefully for the basics (query, write) but features that need newer server endpoints report a clear error rather than guessing.

Get started

Links

• Source: github.com/Basekick-Labs/arcli
• Releases: GitHub releases (archives, packages, checksums, SBOMs)
• Container image: ghcr.io/basekick-labs/arcli
• License: Apache-2.0
• Issues & requests: GitHub issues