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CLI

The c4s CLI

Read, query, and resolve your spec from the terminal — no editor needed.

c4s is the command-line reader for your spec. Where npx @inharness-ai/claude4spec opens the editor in your browser, c4s does the opposite: it stays in the terminal and reads straight from your project — for scripts, CI checks, piping into other tools, or just a quick lookup without leaving your shell.

It's read-only. Every command except ask works directly against the spec database with no running server, so you can drop it into a build step or a git hook.

$c4s --help

c4s ships in the same package as the editor. If you've run npx @inharness-ai/claude4spec in a project, the binary is already available there; install the package globally (or add it to a project's dev dependencies) to call c4s directly.

How it finds your project

You don't point c4s at your spec — it finds it. From the current directory it walks up the tree until it hits a .claude4spec/ directory, then reads from there. Run c4s anywhere inside your repo and it resolves the same project.

To target a project elsewhere, pass --project:

$c4s catalog --project ../my-other-spec

All commands except ask resolve the project by its .claude4spec/db.sqlite file. ask instead looks for .claude4spec/config.json, because it needs to discover the port of a running editor server.

Entity types

A spec is made up of typed entities, and the kinds a project contains can vary. For the basics — the entity types your project has, each with a count and a one-line description — run c4s catalog. It's the place to start when you want to see what a spec is made of.

Global flags

These work on every command:

--project <path>Target a specific project instead of walking up from the current directory.
--format json|textOutput format. Defaults to json (the resolve command defaults to inline instead).
--compactEmit minified JSON — handy when piping into another tool.
--sort-keysDeterministic key ordering in JSON output, so results diff cleanly.
--versionPrint the c4s version and exit.
--helpShow the command list and exit.

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