outline-cli

Go CLI for Outline instances, primarily self-hosted deployments.

Install

Homebrew

brew tap agynio/tap
brew install outline-cli

GitHub Releases

Download the archive for your platform from the GitHub Releases page, unpack it, and place the outline binary on your PATH.

# macOS arm64 example; adjust the version, OS, and architecture as needed.
VERSION=v0.2.1
curl -L -o outline-cli.tar.gz \
  "https://github.com/agynio/outline-cli/releases/download/${VERSION}/outline_${VERSION}_darwin_arm64.tar.gz"
tar -xzf outline-cli.tar.gz
chmod +x outline
sudo mv outline /usr/local/bin/outline
outline --version

Release assets are published for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

From source

go install ./cmd/outline

Authentication

Create an API key in Outline, then save the instance URL and token locally:

outline auth login --base-url https://wiki.example.com --api-key ol_api_xxx
outline auth info
outline auth config

Configuration is stored in ~/.outline-cli/config.yaml; the API key is stored in ~/.outline-cli/token with mode 0600. The CLI is otherwise stateless and does not write local caches.

Output

The default output format is YAML. JSON is available with --output json (or -o json) for scripts, and documents pull prints raw Markdown.

outline collections list
outline documents search --query handbook
outline documents pull <id-or-urlId>
outline documents info --id <id-or-urlId> --output json

Copy-paste examples

These examples assume you have a collection named Test. Replace placeholder IDs with values from your Outline instance.

Collections

# List collections.
outline collections list

# Get the Test collection ID.
COLLECTION_ID=$(outline collections list -o json | jq -r '.[] | select(.name == "Test") | .id')

# Show collection details.
outline collections info --id "$COLLECTION_ID"

# Show the collection document tree.
outline collections tree "$COLLECTION_ID"

Documents

# Create a document in Test.
DOCUMENT_ID=$(outline documents create \
  --collection-id "$COLLECTION_ID" \
  --title "CLI smoke test" \
  --text "# CLI smoke test" \
  --publish \
  -o json | jq -r '.id')

# Update the document.
outline documents update \
  --id "$DOCUMENT_ID" \
  --title "CLI smoke test updated" \
  --text "# Updated from outline-cli"

# Search documents.
outline documents search --query "CLI smoke" --collection-id "$COLLECTION_ID"

# Export the document to a file.
outline documents export --id "$DOCUMENT_ID" --accept text/markdown --out document.md

Comments

# Add a comment.
outline comments create --document-id "$DOCUMENT_ID" --text "Reviewed from outline-cli"

# List document comments.
outline comments list --document-id "$DOCUMENT_ID"

Shares

# Create a share for the document.
SHARE_ID=$(outline shares create --document-id "$DOCUMENT_ID" -o json | jq -r '.id')

# Reliable shares lookup on self-hosted servers: use document ID.
outline shares info --document-id "$DOCUMENT_ID" -o json

# Direct share-id lookup calls the server endpoint and may be unsupported on
# some self-hosted instances.
outline shares info --id "$SHARE_ID" -o json

Safety confirmations

Destructive and security-sensitive commands require --yes in non-interactive contexts or an interactive yes confirmation when a TTY is available. This includes delete, revoke, rotate-secret, empty-trash, user role changes, suspend, attachment delete, file-operation delete, group member removal, and collection membership removal operations.

Binary and multipart workflows

• outline documents import --file <path> [--collection <id>|--parent-document <id>] [--publish] uploads multipart form data.
• outline documents export --id <id> [--accept <mime>] [--out <path>] writes export data to stdout or a file.
• outline collections export --id <id> --format <format> and outline collections export-all --format <format> return Outline file-operation records.
• outline file-operations download --id <id> --out <path> downloads a completed file operation.
• outline comments update --id <id> --data-json <json> updates a comment with a valid ProseMirror document payload.
• outline documents restore --id <id> --revision-id <id> restores a document to a specific revision; --use-latest-revision resolves the newest revision first.
• outline shares info --document-id <doc-id> is the reliable shares lookup path on self-hosted servers; --id calls the server directly and errors with a --document-id hint if unsupported.
• outline attachments create ... returns signed upload instructions.
• outline attachments upload --file <path> [--document <id>] creates signed upload instructions and performs the upload.

Integration smoke runner

scripts/integration_smoke.sh can run a curated method smoke test against a real Outline instance without committing credentials. It reads credentials from environment variables, uses an isolated temporary HOME by default, resolves a collection named Test, creates a temporary document, and prints a method-to-outcome table.

OUTLINE_BASE_URL=https://wiki.example.com \
OUTLINE_API_KEY=ol_api_xxx \
OUTLINE_BIN=/path/to/outline \
scripts/integration_smoke.sh

Optional variables:

• OUTLINE_HOME: custom isolated HOME for CLI config and token files.
• OUTLINE_COLLECTION: collection name to resolve instead of Test.

OUTLINE_BIN is required so the runner uses an existing binary instead of go run, which avoids local CGO/compiler requirements in smoke-test environments.

Common ID aliases and ID arguments are supported for scripting compatibility, including --collection/--collection-id, --document/--document-id, --group/--group-id, and --user/--user-id. Commands that historically accepted a positional ID also accept --id while keeping the positional form for compatibility.

Full command inventory

access-requests

• outline access-requests approve
• outline access-requests create
• outline access-requests dismiss
• outline access-requests info

attachments

• outline attachments create
• outline attachments delete
• outline attachments redirect
• outline attachments upload

auth

• outline auth config
• outline auth info

collections

• outline collections add-group
• outline collections add-user
• outline collections create
• outline collections delete
• outline collections documents
• outline collections export
• outline collections export-all
• outline collections group-memberships
• outline collections info
• outline collections list
• outline collections memberships
• outline collections remove-group
• outline collections remove-user
• outline collections update

comments

• outline comments create
• outline comments delete
• outline comments info
• outline comments list
• outline comments update

data-attributes

• outline data-attributes create
• outline data-attributes delete
• outline data-attributes info
• outline data-attributes list
• outline data-attributes update

documents

• outline documents add-group
• outline documents add-user
• outline documents answer-question
• outline documents archive
• outline documents archived
• outline documents create
• outline documents delete
• outline documents deleted
• outline documents documents
• outline documents drafts
• outline documents duplicate
• outline documents empty-trash
• outline documents export
• outline documents group-memberships
• outline documents import
• outline documents info
• outline documents insights
• outline documents list
• outline documents memberships
• outline documents move
• outline documents remove-group
• outline documents remove-user
• outline documents restore
• outline documents search
• outline documents search-titles
• outline documents templatize
• outline documents unpublish
• outline documents update
• outline documents users
• outline documents viewed

events

• outline events list

file-operations

• outline file-operations delete
• outline file-operations info
• outline file-operations list
• outline file-operations redirect
• outline file-operations download

groups

• outline groups add-user
• outline groups create
• outline groups delete
• outline groups info
• outline groups list
• outline groups memberships
• outline groups remove-user
• outline groups update

oauth-authentications

• outline oauth-authentications delete
• outline oauth-authentications list

oauth-clients

• outline oauth-clients create
• outline oauth-clients delete
• outline oauth-clients info
• outline oauth-clients list
• outline oauth-clients rotate-secret
• outline oauth-clients update

revisions

• outline revisions info
• outline revisions list

shares

• outline shares create
• outline shares info
• outline shares list
• outline shares revoke
• outline shares update

stars

• outline stars create
• outline stars delete
• outline stars list
• outline stars update

templates

• outline templates create
• outline templates delete
• outline templates duplicate
• outline templates info
• outline templates list
• outline templates restore
• outline templates update

users

• outline users activate
• outline users delete
• outline users info
• outline users invite
• outline users list
• outline users suspend
• outline users update
• outline users update-role

views

• outline views create
• outline views list