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guidesJune 23, 2026· 8 min read

The crowkis CLI: every subcommand, with the flags that matter

The binary is the whole product — server, REPL, doctor, bench, and the inspect tools. A tour of the crowkis command line, from cold start to debugging a missed hit.

Crowkis ships as one binary, and that binary is also your toolbox. There's no separate CLI package to install, no client library required to poke at a running instance — `crowkis` is the server, the REPL, the benchmark harness, and the debugger, all behind subcommands. Here's the tour.

Start it, talk to it

cold start to first hit
# start the cache — RESP on :6379, dashboard on :6380, gRPC on :6381
crowkis server --port 6379 --data ./crowkis.data

# in another shell, open the built-in REPL
crowkis cli 127.0.0.1:6379

> CSET "how do refunds work?" "Refunds take 5–7 business days."
OK
> CGET "what's the refund timeline?"   # a paraphrase
"Refunds take 5–7 business days."      # semantic hit

The REPL feels like redis-cli on purpose — every Redis command works, and the C* semantic commands sit right beside them. You can also point any Redis client at the same port; the CLI is just the one that ships in the box.

Check its health, prove it's fast

doctor + bench
# health check & diagnostics — config, ports, model, data dir
crowkis doctor

# built-in benchmarks: latency, throughput, paraphrase hit-rate, reasoning reuse
crowkis bench latency
crowkis bench throughput
crowkis bench paraphrase

`crowkis doctor` is the first thing to run when something feels off — it reports the bind addresses, the embedding model in use, the data directory, and whether auth is configured. `crowkis bench` runs the same harnesses we publish numbers from, against your hardware, so you can see your own latency rather than ours.

Debug a miss you didn't expect

dump + why + tail
# inspect a cache entry — embedding, template, intent, trust
crowkis dump "how do refunds work?"

# explain a hit-or-miss decision — which gate vetoed, and the scores
crowkis why "can I get my money back?"

# follow the structured JSON log, colour-coded, live
crowkis tail

`crowkis why` is the one you'll reach for most: when a query you expected to hit comes back a miss, it walks the five gates and tells you which one vetoed — similarity too low, template mismatch, confidence under the bar, trust or freshness failing — with the actual scores. The cache stops being a black box.

Back it up, move it

backup + restore
crowkis backup ./snapshots          # write a .crowkbak snapshot
crowkis restore ./snapshots/latest  # load one back

# Enterprise verbs, same binary:
crowkis suggest        # cache-optimization suggestions from real traffic
crowkis replay         # replay a workload to size savings
crowkis export-audit   # ship the audit log to your SIEM
One binary you can drop on a laptop or an air-gapped box. The server, the client, the doctor, and the debugger are the same file.