Command line

This page lists every myks command, how the positional selectors pick environments and applications, and every global flag. Run myks <command> --help for the same information in the terminal.

Commands

Command	What it does
render	Syncs external sources and renders manifests. See render.
init	Creates a new project in the current directory. See init.
inspect	Shows environments, applications, prototypes, data values and their origin. See inspect.md.
cleanup	Removes rendered output and cache entries that no environment uses. See cleanup.
migrate	Converts a ytt data-values project to the KCL configuration layer. See migration.md.
print-config	Prints the effective configuration: .myks.yaml, MYKS_* variables and flags merged.
completion	Generates a shell completion script (bash, zsh, fish, powershell).
ytt, vendir, kbld	Runs the embedded copy of the tool, for example myks ytt -f config.yaml.
<plugin>	Runs a plugin for the selected applications. See plugins.md.

myks --version prints the version, commit and build date.

Selecting environments and applications

render, inspect apps and plugin commands take up to two positional arguments:

myks render [environments [applications]]

• environments is a comma-separated list. Each item is a directory path under envs/ (the envs/ prefix is optional) and selects every environment at or below that directory. myks render prod processes envs/prod/eu, envs/prod/us and any other environment under envs/prod. An item can also be an environment ID (prod-eu) once the environment has been rendered: myks finds rendered/envs/prod-eu and resolves it back to its directory. In KCL mode IDs always resolve.
• applications is a comma-separated list of application names (not prototype names). When omitted, all applications of the selected environments are processed.
• ALL in either position means “all”.
• No arguments turns on Smart Mode for render and plugin commands: myks processes only what your Git changes affect. inspect and cleanup never use Smart Mode; without arguments they cover everything.

myks render                          # Smart Mode
myks render ALL                      # every application in every environment
myks render prod                     # everything under envs/prod
myks render prod/eu,stage frontend   # one application in two subtrees
myks render ALL frontend,backend     # two applications wherever they are deployed

Tip

Shell completion knows both forms: directory paths under envs/ and the IDs of rendered environments for the first argument, application names for the second. Install it with myks completion <shell> --help.

render

myks render [environments [applications]] [--sync | --render]

Runs both stages for the selected applications: sync downloads sources with vendir and builds Helm dependencies, render runs the render pipeline and writes the result to rendered/.

Flag	Effect
-s, --sync	Only sync sources.
-r, --render	Only render, reusing the sources of the last sync. Mutually exclusive with --sync.

With --render, myks warns about applications whose sources look unsynced (no sync has run, or a vendored directory is missing), because they may render with missing sources.

All selected applications are processed even when some fail; the command exits non-zero if any of them failed.

After processing, myks deletes the rendered output (rendered/envs/<env-id>/<app>/ and rendered/argocd/<env-id>/app-<app>.yaml) of applications that are no longer listed in a processed environment. myks render ALL (a single ALL) also deletes the rendered output of environments that no longer exist; myks render ALL ALL and Smart Mode runs do not. Use cleanup to do it explicitly.

Credentials for private sources are passed with VENDIR_SECRET_* environment variables, see sources.md.

init

myks init [--force] [--argocd] [--ci github] [--print] [--components <list>]

Creates envs/, prototypes/, rendered/envs/, .gitignore and .myks.yaml in the current directory, plus two sample environments (dev and prod) that run one sample Helm chart. It refuses to overwrite any of these unless you pass --force.

Flag	Effect
-f, --force	Overwrite existing files.
--argocd	Also generate Argo CD resources for both environments, and add an Argo CD installation to dev. Without it, argocd.enabled is false.
--ci github	Also write GitHub Actions workflows that render pull requests and catch stale output on the default branch, see GitOps and CI.
--print	Print files instead of writing them. Applies to the config, gitignore, schema and ci-github components.
--components <list>	Comma-separated subset of config, environments, gitignore, prototypes, schema, ci-github. Default: all but ci-github. environments and prototypes control the samples.

myks init --print --components schema prints the built-in data-values schema, which is the reference for every myks setting (argocd, helm, kbld, render, yttPkg). myks init --print --components config prints a .myks.yaml with all naming conventions spelled out.

init scaffolds a ytt data-values project. See kcl-mode.md for KCL projects.

cleanup

myks cleanup [--manifests] [--cache] [--dry-run]

Flag	Effect
--manifests	Delete rendered output of environments and applications that are no longer configured.
--cache	Delete entries in .myks/vendir-cache/ that no application links to.
--dry-run	Log what would be deleted, delete nothing.

Without --manifests and --cache, both run. cleanup always considers all environments and takes no positional arguments. See optimizations.md.

print-config

Prints the configuration myks runs with, after merging .myks.yaml, MYKS_* environment variables and flags. Useful to check which config file and root directory are picked up.

Global flags

Every flag can also be set in .myks.yaml (same key) or as an environment variable: prefix MYKS_, upper case, . and - replaced with _. Flags win over environment variables, which win over the config file. See configuration.md.

Flag	Environment variable	Default	Effect
-a, --async <n>	MYKS_ASYNC	0	Applications processed in parallel; 0 means no limit. Applies to sync, render, inspect and plugins.
-l, --log-level <level>	MYKS_LOG_LEVEL	info	trace, debug, info, warn, error, fatal, panic. debug logs every executed command, see inspect.md.
--smart-mode.base-revision <rev>	MYKS_SMART_MODE_BASE_REVISION	none	Git revision Smart Mode compares the working tree with. Without it, only uncommitted changes count. See smart-mode.md.
--smart-mode.only-print[=fmt]	MYKS_SMART_MODE_ONLY_PRINT	off	Print what Smart Mode (or the given selectors) would process and exit. text (default without a value) or json.
--buffer-plugin-output	MYKS_BUFFER_PLUGIN_OUTPUT	false	Collect each plugin run’s stdout and stderr and print them when it finishes, instead of streaming. Keeps output of parallel plugin runs apart.
--print-stats	MYKS_PRINT_STATS	false	Print the run summary (tool calls, timings, memory, parallelism, lock contention, sync deduplication) to stdout instead of the log on stderr.
--config <file>	—	none	Config file to use instead of the first .myks.yaml found in the current directory or its parents.

Set NO_COLOR to disable colored output; it is also disabled when stdout is not a terminal.