§04 · Connect & work

The exo CLI

Run cluster agents and tools, manage dashboard resources, and sync skills from the terminal.

The exo CLI is one static binary, no runtime dependencies. It talks to two places: the Exo dashboard API (tenant resources like deployments, roles, and skills) and your cluster's Exo Operator (the in-cluster Agent and Tool custom resources). It caches your session to disk, so you stay logged in across commands. Reach for it during incidents, when the UI is too slow.

Install

The installer grabs the prebuilt binary for your platform, drops it at ~/.exo/bin, and adds it to PATH. Builds ship for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Linux (amd64 and arm64), and Windows.

●terminal· bash

curl -fsSL https://exo.assets.adaptive.live/install.sh | bash

exo version

exo login opens a browser at your Exo endpoint, runs the tenant's sign-in flow (password, OAuth, or SSO), and writes the token to ~/.config/exo/credentials.json (mode 0600). Later commands pick up the cached session on their own.

●terminal· bash

exo login --endpoint https://exo.example.com

A single binary with two command surfaces

Commands fall into two families. Knowing which is which tells you where to look when a call fails.

Agentic commands (agent, tool) describe things living in a workload cluster and route through the platform: the backend relays to the in-cluster manager and records the session, no kubeconfig needed.
Platform commands (deployment, skill, role, team, idp, and the other resource verbs) call the Exo API directly with your bearer token from exo login.

Command reference

●exo help· text

1# Session
2exo login            Authenticate (browser, or --email/--password for CI)
3exo logout           Delete cached credentials
4exo whoami           Show the authenticated user (alias: exo me identity)
5exo me               Show identity; "exo me permissions" shows effective perms
6exo version          Print the CLI version
7 
8# Cluster resources — platform-routed
9exo agent            list | get | run (alias: invoke) | connect | mount
10exo tool             list | get | create -f | delete | connect | exec |
11                     pause | status | test | context [collect]
12exo fs               list | ls | create | cp | resize | delete
13 
14# Dashboard resources (via Exo API, requires exo login)
15exo deployment       list | get | delete | rotate-token
16exo skill            list | get | create | update | delete | sync
17exo sync             Mirror tenant skills + policies onto this machine
18exo mcp              list | get | tools | proxy | create | update | delete
19exo role             list | get | create | update | delete
20exo team             list | get | create | update | delete | add-user |
21                     remove-user
22exo permission       list | create | update | delete
23exo runtime-policy   list | get | create | update | delete
24 
25# Add --json to any command for machine-readable output.
26# -v / -vv / -vvv turn on tracing: lifecycle, +bodies, +headers.

exo run is a top-level shortcut for exo agent run. Resource nouns not listed above (guardrail, integration, sandbox, oauth-app, mcp-server) share the same generic CRUD surface.

Common workflows

Each has a full chapter behind it: attach to an agent, run an agent, connect to a tool, sessions & replay, skills, MCP servers, file systems, and policies.

●attach to an agent· bash

exo agent run prod/checkout-bot --reason "investigating stuck order"

exo agent connect prod/default/checkout-bot

●open a database tool· bash

exo tool connect prod/orders-db

exo tool exec prod/orders-db -- psql -c 'select count(*) from orders'

●fire a run· bash

exo agent run prod/adaptive/triage-bot --reason "nightly triage"

exo agent list

exo agent get triage-bot -n adaptive

●sync skills to disk· bash

exo skill sync --runtime claude --local --prune

exo sync

●MCP servers and file systems· bash

exo mcp tools linear

claude mcp add linear -- exo mcp proxy linear

exo fs cp ./dataset.parquet build-cache:/data/dataset.parquet

exo fs ls build-cache:/data

exo agent mount ./src:/workspace/src --name triage-bot

Environment & config

●environment· text

1EXO_ENDPOINT          Dashboard API base URL (else credentials.json, else default)
2EXO_TOKEN             Raw bearer token — highest precedence
3EXO_CLIENT_ID         OAuth client credentials, exchanged at /api/v1/oauth/token
4EXO_CLIENT_SECRET     (used when no EXO_TOKEN / credentials.json is present)
5EXO_CREDENTIALS       Override path to credentials.json (default ~/.config/exo/)
6EXO_MANAGER_URL       Direct autonomic-manager URL (bypass the kube-apiserver proxy)
7NO_COLOR              Disable ANSI colour (https://no-color.org)