CLI Reference — @uks/cli

The uks command validates, inspects, converts, signs, serves, and publishes UKS packets. It's the fastest way to work with the format.

npm install -g @uks/cli
uks --help

The package is published as @uks/cli (scoped, due to npm's name-similarity policy). The command it installs is uks.

Commands

Command	Purpose
uks validate <file>	Validate a packet against the normative JSON Schema
uks info <file>	Inspect a packet — id, topic, level, layers, top sources
uks test <file>	Run conformance checks against the packet
uks scaffold --from openapi <file>	Scaffold a UKS L2 packet from an OpenAPI 3.x spec
uks convert --from <bibtex|ris> <file>	Convert BibTeX / RIS into a UKS L1 packet
uks export --format <jsonld|fhir> <file>	Emit JSON-LD (schema.org Dataset) or FHIR R4
uks sign <file>	Ed25519-sign a packet (detached signature)
uks verify <file>	Verify a packet's signature
uks serve [file]	Print Claude Desktop MCP config (registry-connected by default)
uks publish <file>	Publish a packet to the registry
uks search <query>	Search published packets
uks pull <packet-id>	Download a packet from the registry
uks unpublish <packet-id>	Remove your packet from the registry
uks registry stats	Show registry statistics
uks config <get|set|generate-key>	Manage local config (registry URL, API key)

Validate

uks validate my-packet.uks.json
# ✓ my-packet.uks.json
#   conformance level: L1 ✓

Validation is schema-accurate and matches the TypeScript and Python SDKs — the three implementations agree on the conformance corpus.

Serve over MCP

uks serve my-packet.uks.json            # registry-connected by default
uks serve --offline my-packet.uks.json  # local packet only

Prints a claude_desktop_config.json snippet. See MCP Server.

Sign & publish

# See how to get a registry API key (a SaberTools st_live_* key)
uks config generate-key
uks config set registry.apiKey st_live_xxxx

# Sign with an Ed25519 key, then publish
uks publish --sign --sign-key ./my-key.pem my-packet.uks.json

A signed packet records a did:key publisher identity, verified server-side. See Publishing to the registry and Signing.

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