[Proposal] Official CLI tool for ElysiaJS

[sc30gsw]

Overview

Hi! I have been working on a CLI tool for ElysiaJS that makes it easier to interact with the framework from the terminal — both for humans and AI coding agents.

This project was inspired by hono-cli — the official CLI for the Hono framework. Seeing how much a dedicated CLI improves the DX for Hono users made me want to explore what something similar could look like for ElysiaJS.

The tool is available on npm: @sc30gsw/elysiajs-cli
Source code: sc30gsw/elysiajs-cli

I would love to get feedback from the community, and I am also opening this as a discussion about whether an official CLI could be a valuable addition to the ElysiaJS ecosystem.

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Features

The CLI currently exposes five commands:

Command	Description
elysia docs [path]	Browse official Elysia documentation in the terminal
elysia search <query>	Fuzzy-search the docs (outputs JSON by default)
elysia request [file] [url]	Send HTTP requests to your app via app.handle() — no server needed
elysia serve [entry]	Start a dev server with hot reload (Bun native --hot or esbuild+chokidar on Node.js)
elysia optimize [entry]	Bundle and tree-shake your app with esbuild

Works with Bun (≥1.0) and Node.js (≥20).

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AI Agent Support

One motivation for building this was to make ElysiaJS more accessible to AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot Workspace, etc.).

• elysia search outputs JSON by default, making it trivial to pipe into jq or consume programmatically
• elysia docs fetches and caches official documentation locally, so agents can read the latest Elysia docs without going through a browser
• The README includes a suggested CLAUDE.md snippet that developers can drop into their projects so AI agents automatically know how to use the CLI

Example snippet for CLAUDE.md:

## Elysia CLI

- Use `elysia docs <path>` to read official documentation
- Use `elysia search <query> | jq` to find relevant docs
- Use `elysia req <file> <url>` to test handlers without a running server
- Use `elysia serve` to start the dev server

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Why an Official CLI?

Several popular frameworks ship a first-party CLI that significantly improves the developer experience:

• Hono — honojs/cli ← the inspiration for this project
• Nitro / H3 — nitro CLI
• Fastify — fastify-cli

Having an official @elysiajs/cli (or create-elysia) could:

1. Lower the barrier to entry — new developers can scaffold and explore the framework without reading all the docs first
2. Improve documentation access — elysia docs and elysia search put the official docs one command away, including inside AI agent contexts
3. Enable in-process testing — elysia request lets you test handlers without spinning up a server, which is great for CI and quick iterations
4. Provide a standard dev workflow — elysia serve and elysia optimize give a consistent starting point across projects

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Installation

# npm
npm install -g @sc30gsw/elysiajs-cli

# pnpm
pnpm add -g @sc30gsw/elysiajs-cli

# bun (no persistent global install — use bunx to run directly)
bunx @sc30gsw/elysiajs-cli

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Next Steps

I am sharing this as a starting point, not a finished product. I would really appreciate:

• Feedback on the command design, API surface, and DX
• Ideas for additional commands that would be most useful
• A discussion about whether this kind of tooling would fit into the official ElysiaJS organization

If the core team is interested, I am happy to contribute this (or a rewritten version of it) upstream. If there are concerns about scope or maintenance, I completely understand — feedback alone would be incredibly valuable.

Thanks for building such a great framework! 🙏