Cypress Cloud CLI

Use cy-cloud directly to investigate Cypress Cloud. Execute the commands, inspect their JSON, and report conclusions supported by the returned data. Do not send the user to the Cloud UI when the CLI can answer the question.

Start safely

The published binary requires Node.js 22.21.0 or newer.

Run these checks only on first use, when the environment is unknown, or after an installation or authentication error. If cy-cloud already worked in this session, invoke the investigation command directly instead of spending another turn rechecking the setup.

node --version
cy-cloud status
cy-cloud --help

Assume cy-cloud is already installed and available on PATH. Run it from the user's current workspace; do not locate, clone, build, or depend on the cloud-cli source repository. If the command is unavailable, stop and report the missing prerequisite. The user can install it with:

npm install -g @cypress/cloud

If unauthenticated, ask the user to choose an authentication method:

cy-cloud login                 # interactive OAuth
cy-cloud login --token "$PAT"  # persist a Personal Access Token

For CI or an existing environment, CYPRESS_CLOUD_TOKEN takes precedence over stored credentials and writes no credential file.

Never print, echo, read back, or commit tokens. Never inspect ~/.config/cy-cloud/auth.json or cypress.env.json; use cy-cloud status.

The organization must have the Cypress Cloud CLI integration enabled. A response saying it is not enabled requires action from an organization administrator; it cannot be fixed with another CLI command.

Discover instead of guessing

Every command supports:

cy-cloud --help
cy-cloud <command> --help
cy-cloud <command> --schema

Treat cy-cloud --help as authoritative for available commands, per-command --help as authoritative for arguments, and --schema as the intended response contract. Use them before constructing a query when a command, flag, or field is uncertain. Do not memorize a command inventory from this skill; the installed CLI may be newer or older than these instructions. Validate the actual response too: run get can return a fractional duration, and replay info.failedAt can be a fractional epoch even when the schema declares an integer. Treat those values as numbers and report the schema mismatch if it matters; do not discard or round the data.

Successful data commands write JSON to stdout. Parse that JSON directly; do not install a JSON tool to run this skill. Replay download progress is written to stderr, so never combine stderr with stdout before parsing JSON:

cy-cloud replay timeline --testId <uuid> --attempt <failedAttemptNumber> 2>/dev/null

If a command fails, rerun without suppressing stderr. Argument-validation errors can appear on stdout; command execution errors appear on stderr. Both exit with status 1.

Cloud-backed fetches may be blocked by security sandboxes even when local commands such as status succeed. Run Cloud data commands with network access allowed. If a fetch fails with a sandbox or network denial, retry that same command with broader network permission before diagnosing a CLI, authentication, or Cloud problem.

Replay downloads are cached on disk. Confirm the location with cy-cloud cache info (.location) and run Cloud commands so that directory can be written and still exists later in this session. An ephemeral sandbox that cannot persist it will re-download replay data or fail cache validation, including on otherwise local commands. Do not relocate the cache into the user's project.

Cloud API calls are rate limited per user. Prefer considered, methodical requests: reuse identifiers already in a URL or prior response, skip org and project discovery when an ID is known, and do not page further than the question requires. After the first replay download for a test, replay info and replay timeline run against the local cache and do not count against that limit, so those follow-up queries can be chatty. If a command reports an exceeded rate limit, stop issuing Cloud-backed requests and report the limit; do not retry in a tight loop.

Identifiers and pagination

For projectId, use the project identifier already present in a Cloud URL; both the short slug and the project UUID are accepted by project/run lookups and run-scoped spec/test lists. Do not perform organization and project discovery merely to replace a UUID with a slug. runNumber is the per-project run number. specId and testId are UUIDs. Attempt numbers are 1-indexed, matching Cypress Cloud.

Cloud list responses have .pagination; request more pages when the question is not limited to the first page.

Route by task

Read only the references required for the current task:

• Find orgs, projects, runs, specs, or tests, or open a Cloud URL: read investigation.md.
• Inspect attempts, flakes, or failure screenshots: read investigation.md.
• Query Test Replay: read investigation.md and test-replay.md.
• Inspect the app itself (DOM, ARIA, computed styles, a live screenshot) at a moment in the test, or find which command changed an element: read replay-view.md.
• Diagnose why a recorded test failed: read investigation.md, test-replay.md, replay-view.md when the timeline alone does not explain the symptom, and diagnosis.md.

Cache and common recovery

cy-cloud cache info
cy-cloud cache cleanup
cy-cloud cache clear

Use cache cleanup for normal maintenance. Use cache clear only when replay resolution appears stale or corrupted because it forces future replay downloads. If replay re-downloads every command, the cache directory is not persisting; retry with a sandbox that can write to the location reported by cache info.

Common outcomes:

• Missing expected fields: inspect that command's --schema.
• JSON parse failure: ensure stderr was not merged into stdout.
• Cache validation or write errors from the sandbox: retry so the cache directory is writable and persistent; do not copy the cache into the project.
• cy-cloud version reporting "status": "Unknown" does not by itself mean the installation is broken or outdated. Compare version and latestVersion; upgrade only when those values or an explicit compatibility error indicate it.
• Exceeded rate limit: stop Cloud-backed requests and report the limit; do not retry in a loop. Cached replay queries are exempt once the download has succeeded.
• Replay-specific errors: read test-replay.md.