Kalam CLI

The Kalam CLI (kalam) is the SQL-first terminal client for KalamDB. It ships as a native Rust binary and as the npm package @kalamdb/cli.

Use it for:

• project workflows — kalam init, kalam dev, migrations, and schema codegen
• one-shot SQL and interactive shells
• named instance profiles (dev, staging, prod)
• live query subscriptions and topic consumers
• cluster and storage meta-commands

June 17 v0.5.3-rc.1 CLI Workflow

The June 17 v0.5.3-rc.1 pre-release makes kalam init and kalam dev the main local project workflow. Read the release note, then start with Project Init and Local Development.

Recommended reading order

Project workflow

1. Setup & Install
2. Project Init
3. kalam.toml Reference
4. Local Development — includes schema file watch
5. Migrations

SQL client

6. Authentication
7. Querying & SQL
8. Live Subscriptions
9. Topic Consumers
10. Interactive Commands
11. SQL Workflows
12. Options & Timeouts

Execution modes

When you run kalam without a subcommand, these modes apply (in precedence order):

1. --subscribe / --list-subscriptions — subscription management
2. --consume --topic ... — topic consumer mode
3. SQL execution:
   • --file <path> — execute file and exit
   • --command <sql> — execute one statement and exit
   • no flags — interactive shell

Project commands (init, dev, migration, db, schema, status, deploy) are always top-level subcommands.

Quick command map

1# Project workflow2kalam init3kalam init --yes --name my-app --languages typescript --package-manager pnpm4kalam dev5kalam migration status6kalam migration seal && kalam db migrate7kalam db reset8kalam schema gen9kalam status10 11# Interactive SQL shell12kalam13 14# One-shot SQL15kalam -c "SELECT * FROM system.tables LIMIT 5;"16 17# Live subscription18kalam --subscribe "SELECT * FROM app.messages"19 20# Topic consumer21kalam --consume --topic blog.summarizer --group summarizer-agent --from latest22 23# Login and doctor24kalam login --instance prod --url https://db.example.com --user admin --password25kalam doctor -v

Related docs

• Server getting started
• SQL reference
• TypeScript ORM
• TypeScript consumers