Official CircleCI CLI for validating configs, managing pipelines and project settings, and administering CircleCI runners.
$brew install circleci
Agent Compatibility
JSON Output
Agent Skill
MCP Support
AI Analysis
CircleCI CLI is the official command surface for working with CircleCI config, projects, pipelines, contexts, orbs, and self-hosted runners. It spans both local config workflows and authenticated account or organization operations against CircleCI APIs.
What It Enables
- Validate, pack, process, and generate CircleCI config files, then run a named job locally in Docker with
local execute. - List or manage contexts, project secrets, projects, pipeline definitions, and pipeline runs from the terminal instead of the web UI.
- Administer self-hosted runner resource classes, tokens, and instances, and inspect organization metadata for follow-up automation.
Agent Fit
- Good shell fit for config validation, local CI debugging, and scripted admin tasks because most commands are flag-driven and return clear success or failure states.
- Structured output is real but uneven: JSON is available for contexts, org info, project secrets, runners, and orb listings, while pipeline and local-execute flows mostly print human text.
- Best used by agents that can hold CircleCI credentials and prefill required flags; setup, pipeline create, and pipeline run fall back to interactive prompts when inputs are missing.
Caveats
- Authenticated commands need a CircleCI API token, and setup defaults interactive unless you use the hidden
setup --no-promptpath. local executedepends on Docker and CircleCI's config processing, and some legacy commands still proxy tocircleci-agentonly inside CircleCI jobs.