Blaxel CLI overview

Install the Blaxel CLI (bl) to manage sandboxes, agents, MCP servers, jobs, and other resources from your terminal, with auth and command reference.

Blaxel CLI (bl) is a command line tool to interact with the Blaxel APIs.

Install

Run the installer in a terminal:

macOS and Linux

curl -fsSL https://blaxel.ai/install.sh | sh

The installer checks the Blaxel CLI (bl) against the release checksums, installs it, and adds it to your PATH. On macOS and Linux, it also installs completions for your current shell if you use zsh, bash, or fish. On Windows, configure PowerShell completions separately. It then runs bl setup, which shows what it found and installs it when you press Enter: the Blaxel skills and MCP servers for the coding agents on your machine (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others), then the browser login. Run it again at any time to add what is missing.

Install with Homebrew

brew install blaxel-ai/blaxel/blaxel
bl setup

Homebrew 6.0.0+ requires explicit trust for non-official taps, so use the fully qualified formula name.

Installer options

On macOS and Linux, set these variables for sh:

Variable	Effect
VERSION=v0.1.119	Install that release instead of the latest
BINDIR=/usr/local/bin	Install to that folder instead of ~/.local/bin
BL_INSTALL_SETUP=false	Install the CLI only, and run bl setup later
BL_INSTALL_SKILLS=false	Leave your coding agents alone
BL_INSTALL_PATH=false	Do not add bl to your PATH
BL_INSTALL_COMPLETION=false	Skip the shell completions

For example, to install a specific release for all users:

curl -fsSL https://blaxel.ai/install.sh | sudo VERSION=v0.1.119 BINDIR=/usr/local/bin sh

Under sudo, the installer still sets up your own shell, coding agents and login. In CI, it installs the CLI only and leaves the shell configuration and coding agents alone. On Windows, run $env:BL_INSTALL_SETUP = "false" before the installer to install the CLI only.

Update

Update on Mac

Update Blaxel CLI by running the following command in a terminal:

bl upgrade

If you need to update to a specific version (e.g. v0.1.21):

bl upgrade --version 0.1.21

You can also upgrade using Homebrew:

brew upgrade blaxel

Update on Linux

Update Blaxel CLI by running the following command in a terminal:

bl upgrade

If you need to update to a specific version (e.g. v0.1.21):

bl upgrade --version 0.1.21

Update on Windows

Run the installer again in PowerShell. It installs the latest release and sets up anything new:

irm https://blaxel.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Shell autocompletion

On macOS and Linux, the installer sets up autocompletion for your current shell if you use zsh, bash, or fish. To set it up yourself, or for PowerShell, run one of the following:

zsh

echo 'eval "$(bl completion zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc

Get started

First, create a workspace on the Blaxel console. The installer logs you in; to log in again, run:

bl login

If you have multiple workspaces, the one you last logged into will be used automatically in every subsequent command you run. You can log in to as many workspaces as you want.

To set your context to a different workspace you already logged in to, use the following command:

bl workspaces your-workspace

### You can retrieve the list of all your workspaces by running:
bl workspaces

Basic commands to scaffold, develop, and deploy your resources:

Command	Purpose
bl new	Scaffold a new local project (code + blaxel.toml)
bl deploy	Build image + push image + create/update resource + watch logs
bl push	Build image + push image to Blaxel registry (no resource created or updated)
bl apply	Declarative resource creation/update using YAML files, similar to kubectl apply
bl serve	Local execution (not available for sandboxes)

bl deploy is an all-in-one command that packages local files into an image, pushes it as a template, and deploys it as a resource on Blaxel. Use the --skip-build flag to skip image rebuilding. Use bl push instead to only build and push the image.

Interact with existing resources in your workspace:

bl get sandboxes

Options

-h, --help               Get the help for Blaxel
-w, --workspace string   Specify the Blaxel workspace to work on.
-o, --output string      Output format. One of: pretty, yaml, json, table
-v, --verbose            Enable verbose output