Command line completion

As a serverpod user, you can enable command line completion in most shells. The Serverpod CLI supports completion through Carapace, which provides tab-completion for commands, options, and their values in bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell, and more.

Installing completion

Prerequisites

Install Carapace for your platform:

macOS:

brew install carapace

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install carapace-bin

Windows:

winget install carapace

For other platforms, see the Carapace installation guide.

Enable Carapace completion for Serverpod

Bash

Install the completion spec:

serverpod completion install --tool carapace

Then add the following to your ~/.bashrc to enable Carapace:

source <(carapace _carapace)

Restart your shell or run source ~/.bashrc to apply.

Zsh

Install the completion spec:

serverpod completion install --tool carapace

Then add the following to your ~/.zshrc to enable Carapace:

zstyle ':completion:*' format $'\e[2;37mCompleting %d\e[m'
source <(carapace _carapace)

Restart your shell or run source ~/.zshrc to apply.

Other shells

Carapace supports fish, PowerShell, elvish, and more. After installing the completion spec with serverpod completion install --tool carapace, see the Carapace setup documentation for instructions specific to your shell.

Alternative: Completely

The Serverpod CLI also supports Completely, a lightweight alternative to Carapace that supports bash and zsh. Unlike Carapace, Completely does not require a separate tool running in your shell — it generates a standalone bash completion script.

To generate a Completely spec and create a completion script:

serverpod completion generate --tool completely -f serverpod.yaml
completely generate serverpod.yaml serverpod.bash

Then source the generated script in your shell config (e.g., source /path/to/serverpod.bash in ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc).

note

Carapace is the recommended tool as it supports a wider range of shells and comes with a pre-built completion spec that can be installed directly with serverpod completion install. Completely requires generating and processing the script manually.