Spacectl is a command-line interface (CLI) tool designed to provide programmatic access to Spacelift's GraphQL API. It enables users to interact with Spacelift resources in both manual interactive environments and automated CI/CD pipelines, facilitating tasks such as stack deployment, resource management, and workflow automation.
Key Features:
GraphQL API Access: Leverages Spacelift's GraphQL API for flexible and powerful programmatic interactions.
Multi-Environment Support: Works seamlessly across different operating systems, including MacOS, Linux, and Windows.
Authentication Methods: Supports various authentication flows, including API keys, GitHub tokens, and web-based login.
CI/CD Integration: Designed to integrate with popular CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, CircleCI, and Jenkins for automated workflows.
Profile Management: Allows users to manage multiple Spacelift profiles for different accounts or environments.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for DevOps engineers, cloud architects, and development teams leveraging Spacelift for infrastructure management. Spacectl streamlines workflow automation, enhances security through role-based access control, and simplifies interaction with Spacelift resources, enabling efficient collaboration and deployment in both manual and automated contexts. It can be installed via winget on Windows systems.
README
spacectl, the Spacelift CLI
spacectl is a utility wrapping Spacelift's GraphQL API for easy programmatic access in command-line contexts - either in manual interactive mode (in your local shell), or in a predefined CI pipeline (GitHub actions, CircleCI, Jenkins etc).
Its primary purpose is to help you explore and execute actions inside Spacelift. It provides limited functionality for creating or editing resources. To do that programatically, you can use the Spacelift Terraform Provider.
Installation
Officially supported packages
Officially supported packages are maintained by Spacelift and are the preferred ways to install spacectl
Homebrew
You can install spacectl using Homebrew on MacOS or Linux:
brew install spacelift-io/spacelift/spacectl
Windows
You can install spacectl using winget:
winget install spacectl
or
winget install --id spacelift-io.spacectl
Docker image
spacectl is distributed as a Docker image, which can be used as follows:
docker run -it --rm ghcr.io/spacelift-io/spacectl stack deploy --id my-infra-stack
Alternatively, spacectl is distributed through GitHub Releases as a zip file containing a self-contained statically linked executable built from the source in this repository. Binaries can be download directly from the Releases page.
Usage on GitHub Actions
We have setup-spacectl GitHub Action that can be used to install spacectl:
Please make sure to verify the APKBUILD before installing/updating.
Quick Start
Authenticate using spacectl profile login:
> spacectl profile login my-account
Enter Spacelift endpoint (eg. https://unicorn.app.spacelift.io/): http://my-account.app.spacelift.tf
Select authentication flow:
1) for API key,
2) for GitHub access token,
3) for login with a web browser
Option: 3
Use spacectl :rocket::
> spacectl stack list
Name | Commit | Author | State | Worker Pool | Locked By
stack-1 | 1aa0ef62 | Adam Connelly | NONE | |
stack-2 | 1aa0ef62 | Adam Connelly | DISCARDED | |
Getting Help
To list all the commands available, use spacectl help:
> spacectl help
NAME:
spacectl - Programmatic access to Spacelift GraphQL API.
USAGE:
spacectl [global options] [command [command options]]
VERSION:
1.13.0
COMMANDS:
profile Manage Spacelift profiles
whoami Print out logged-in user's information
version Print out CLI version
module Manage a Spacelift module
stack Manage a Spacelift stack
provider Manage a Terraform provider
run-external-dependency Manage Spacelift Run external dependencies
workerpool Manages workerpools and their workers.
blueprint Manage Spacelift blueprints
policy Manage Spacelift policies
audit-trail Manage Spacelift audit trail entries
mcp Manage MCP server
help, h Shows a list of commands or help for one command
GLOBAL OPTIONS:
--help, -h show help
--version, -v print the version
To get help about a particular command or subcommand, use the -h flag:
> spacectl profile -h
NAME:
spacectl profile - Manage Spacelift profiles
USAGE:
spacectl profile [command [command options]]
COMMANDS:
current Outputs your currently selected profile
export-token Prints the current token to stdout. In order not to leak, we suggest piping it to your OS pastebin
usage-csv Prints CSV with usage data for the current account
list List all your Spacelift account profiles
login Create a profile for a Spacelift account
logout Remove Spacelift credentials for an existing profile
select Select one of your Spacelift account profiles
OPTIONS:
--help, -h show help
Example
The following screencast shows an example of using spacectl to run a one-off task in Spacelift:
Authentication
spacectl is designed to work in two different contexts - a non-interactive scripting mode (eg. external CI/CD pipeline) and a local interactive mode, where you type commands into your shell. Because of this, it supports two types of credentials - environment variables and user profiles.
We refer to each method of providing credentials as "credential providers" (like AWS), and details of each method are documented in the following sections.
Authenticating using environment variables
The CLI supports the following authentication methods via the environment:
spacectl looks for authentication configurations in the order specified above, and will stop as soon as it finds a valid configuration. For example, if a Spacelift API token is specified, GitHub tokens and Spacelift API keys will be ignored, even if their environment variables are specified.
Spacelift API tokens
Spacelift API tokens can be specified using the SPACELIFT_API_TOKEN environment variable. When this variable is found, the CLI ignores all the other authentication environment variables because the token contains all the information needed to authenticate.
NOTE: API tokens are generally short-lived and will need to be re-created often.
GitHub tokens
GitHub tokens are only available to accounts that use GitHub as their identity provider, but are very convenient for use in GitHub actions. To use a GitHub token, set the following environment variables:
SPACELIFT_API_KEY_ENDPOINT - the URL to your Spacelift account, for example https://mycorp.app.spacelift.io.
SPACELIFT_API_GITHUB_TOKEN - a GitHub personal access token.
Spacelift API keys
To use a Spacelift API key, set the following environment variables:
SPACELIFT_API_KEY_ENDPOINT - the URL to your Spacelift account, for example https://mycorp.app.spacelift.io.
SPACELIFT_API_KEY_ID - the ID of your Spacelift API key. Available via the Spacelift application.
SPACELIFT_API_KEY_SECRET - the secret for your API key. Only available when the secret is created.
More information about API authentication can be found at .
Authenticating using account profiles
In order to make working with multiple Spacelift accounts easy in interactive scenarios, Spacelift supports account management through the profile family of commands:
❯ spacectl profile
NAME:
spacectl profile - Manage Spacelift profiles
USAGE:
spacectl profile command [command options] [arguments...]
COMMANDS:
current Outputs your currently selected profile
export-token Prints the current token to stdout. In order not to leak, we suggest piping it to your OS pastebin
list List all your Spacelift account profiles
login Create a profile for a Spacelift account
logout Remove Spacelift credentials for an existing profile
select Select one of your Spacelift account profiles
help, h Shows a list of commands or help for one command
OPTIONS:
--help, -h show help (default: false)
Each of the subcommands requires an account alias, which is a short, user-friendly name for each set of credentials (account profiles). Profiles don't need to be unique - you can have multiple sets of credentials for a single account too.
Account profiles support three authentication methods:
GitHub access tokens
API keys
Login with a browser (API token).
In order to authenticate to your first profile, type in the following (make sure to replace ${MY_ALIAS} with the actual profile alias):
❯ spacectl profile login ${MY_ALIAS}
Enter Spacelift endpoint (eg. https://unicorn.app.spacelift.io/):
In the next step, you will be asked to choose which authentication method you are going to use. Note that if your account is using SAML-based SSO authentication, then API keys and login with a browser are your only options. After you're done entering credentials, the CLI will validate them against the server, and assuming that they're valid, will persist them in a credentials file in .spacelift/${MY_ALIAS}. It will also create a symlink in ${HOME}/.spacelift/current pointing to the current profile.
By default the login process is interactive, however, if that does not fit your workflow, the steps can be predefined using flags, for example:
You can switch between account profiles by using spacectl profile select ${MY_ALIAS}. What this does behind the scenes is point ${HOME}/.spacelift/current to the new location. You can also delete stored credetials for a given profile by using the spacectl profile logout ${MY_ALIAS} command.
MCP Server
Spacectl includes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that allows AI models to interact with Spacelift through a standardized interface. MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs, similar to how USB-C provides a standardized way to connect devices to peripherals.
