Vespa CLI

Overview

The Vespa CLI (vespa) is the official command-line tool for interacting with Vespa instances -- both self-hosted deployments and Vespa Cloud. It provides commands for deploying application packages, feeding documents, running queries, inspecting logs, running tests, and managing authentication.

Installation

On macOS via Homebrew:

brew install vespa-cli

On Linux or other platforms, download the binary from the GitHub releases page:

# Example for Linux amd64
curl -fsSL https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/releases/latest/download/vespa-cli_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv vespa /usr/local/bin/

Verify the installation:

vespa version

Core Concepts

• Target: the Vespa endpoint the CLI talks to (local, cloud, or a custom URL).
• Application: a specific Vespa application identified as tenant.application.instance.
• Cluster: a named container or content cluster within an application. Required when an application has multiple clusters.

Configuration & Targets

The CLI stores configuration in a .vespa directory. There is a global config at ~/.vespa and an optional local config in the current working directory (.vespa).

Setting the Target

# Target a local Vespa instance (default: http://localhost:8080)
vespa config set target local

# Target Vespa Cloud
vespa config set target cloud

# Target a custom endpoint URL
vespa config set target https://my-vespa-host:8080

Setting the Application

# Format: tenant.application.instance
vespa config set application mytenant.myapp.default

Viewing Current Configuration

vespa config get

This prints all effective configuration values including their source (flag, environment, local config, or global config).

Config Hierarchy

Configuration values are resolved in the following order (highest priority first):

1. Command-line flags (--target, --application, etc.)
2. Environment variables (VESPA_CLI_HOME, etc.)
3. Local .vespa config in the current working directory
4. Global ~/.vespa config in the user home directory

Environment Variables

Authentication (Vespa Cloud)

Vespa Cloud requires authentication at two layers: the control plane (API calls for deployment, configuration) and the data plane (queries, feeding).

Control Plane: Browser-Based Login

# Log in via browser-based OAuth flow
vespa auth login

# Log out and clear stored credentials
vespa auth logout

After logging in, the CLI stores a token that authenticates subsequent control-plane operations (deploy, status checks, log retrieval).

Data Plane: mTLS Certificates

Vespa Cloud uses mutual TLS for data-plane access (queries, feeding). You need a certificate and private key.

# Generate a self-signed key pair and add the certificate to the application package
vespa cert

# Add an existing certificate to the application package (does not generate a new key)
vespa cert add path/to/cert.pem

The vespa cert command creates the key pair and places the certificate in security/clients.pem inside the application package. The private key is stored in ~/.vespa/ by default.

API Key Authentication (CI/CD)

For headless environments where browser login is not possible, use an API key:

# Point the CLI to an API key file for control-plane auth
vespa config set api-key-file /path/to/api-key.pem

API keys are created in the Vespa Cloud console under your tenant settings.

Deployment Lifecycle

Deploy

# Deploy the application package in the current directory
vespa deploy

# Deploy from a specific path
vespa deploy myapp/

# Deploy and wait up to 300 seconds for convergence
vespa deploy --wait 300

The vespa deploy command uploads the application package, validates it, and activates it on the target. For Vespa Cloud dev/perf zones, this is a single-step operation.

Prepare and Activate (Self-Hosted)

On self-hosted Vespa, you can split deployment into two stages:

# Prepare: upload and validate the package without activating
vespa prepare

# Activate: activate the most recently prepared session
vespa activate

This two-step workflow is useful when you want to validate configuration before making it live.

Check Status

# Check if container and content nodes are up and ready
vespa status

# Check deployment convergence (are all nodes running the latest config?)
vespa status deploy

Tear Down (Vespa Cloud)

# Destroy the dev deployment (requires interactive confirmation)
vespa destroy

This removes the application from the Vespa Cloud dev zone. It does not affect production deployments.

Production Deployments (Vespa Cloud)

Use vespa prod init to generate deployment.xml, then vespa prod deploy to submit to the Vespa Cloud build pipeline (build → system test → staging test → production rollout). For pipeline stage details and commands, load docs/production-deploy.md.

Document Operations

The CLI provides commands for individual document CRUD and bulk feeding. For detailed JSON wire format, partial update syntax, and advanced feeding patterns, load the feed-operations skill.

Single-Document Operations

# Put a document from a JSON file
vespa document put doc.json

# Put with an explicit document ID
vespa document put id:mynamespace:music::doc-1 doc.json

# Get a document by ID
vespa document get id:mynamespace:music::doc-1

# Remove a document by ID
vespa document remove id:mynamespace:music::doc-1

Bulk Feeding

# Feed a JSONL file (one operation per line)
vespa feed docs.jsonl

# Feed from stdin
cat docs.jsonl | vespa feed -

# Feed with tuned concurrency
vespa feed --connections 4 --max-streams-per-connection 128 docs.jsonl

Querying

# Run a YQL query
vespa query 'select * from music where artist contains "Radiohead"'

# Pass additional parameters
vespa query 'select * from music where true' hits=5 ranking=my_profile

Visiting / Exporting Documents

# Visit all documents
vespa visit

# Visit with a selection expression
vespa visit --selection "music.year > 2000"

# Limit the number of visited documents
vespa visit --count 100

Debugging & Troubleshooting

Log Inspection

# Show recent logs from the Vespa instance
vespa log

# Follow logs in real time (like tail -f)
vespa log --follow

# Filter by log level
vespa log --level warning,error

# Show only logs from the last 2 hours
vespa log --from 2h

On Vespa Cloud, vespa log retrieves logs from the cloud logging infrastructure. On self-hosted, it reads from the config server log endpoint.

Authenticated HTTP Requests

vespa curl sends HTTP requests to the Vespa endpoint with the correct authentication headers and certificates already configured:

# Check application status
vespa curl /ApplicationStatus

# Fetch metrics
vespa curl /metrics/v2/values

# Custom container endpoint
vespa curl /search/?yql=select+*+from+music+where+true

# Target a specific API path on the config server
vespa curl --service config /application/v2/tenant/

This is particularly useful for Vespa Cloud, where requests require mTLS certificates that vespa curl attaches automatically.

Query Tracing

Add tracelevel to a query to get detailed execution traces:

# Trace at level 3 (shows query rewriting, dispatch, and backend timing)
vespa query 'select * from music where title contains "computer"' tracelevel=3

# Higher levels produce more detail (up to 9)
vespa query 'select * from music where true' tracelevel=5

Trace output is included in the JSON response under the trace object. It reveals query parsing, ranking, matching, and network timing information.

For vespa test, vespa clone, vespa version, vespa man, load docs/tests-utilities.md.

Global Flags

These flags are available on all commands and override configuration values:

Common Errors & Fixes

For deeper detail, load docs/cli-reference.md, docs/ci-cd.md, docs/production-deploy.md, or docs/tests-utilities.md from this skill's directory as needed.