Command reference

This page covers the non-interactive half of openbooks-cli — everything you get by passing a subcommand instead of launching the TUI. Definitions come from the clap derive in openbooks-cli/src/main.rs; the handlers themselves live in openbooks-cli/src/cli.rs.

Global options

These apply to every subcommand, defined once as global clap arguments:

Flag	Default	Purpose
--api <API>	http://localhost:38081	Base URL of the API. Also settable via the OPENBOOKS_API environment variable.
--json	off	Emit the API’s own JSON response instead of aligned text.
-h, --help	—	Print help for the command (or -h for a summary).
-V, --version	—	Print the CLI’s version.

Exit codes

There is exactly one failure path. main() runs everything through run(); any error — a clap parse failure, a bad flag value, an API error, a network failure — is printed to stderr as error: <context chain> and the process exits 1. Success exits 0. There’s no second error code to distinguish “bad input” from “API unreachable”; scripts should read stderr for that.

auth

Sign in, check who’s signed in, or clear the stored credential. Implemented in openbooks-cli/src/auth.rs; see The CLI for where the tokens live and Authentication for the OAuth protocol underneath.

Usage: openbooks-cli auth <login|logout|status|token>
Usage: openbooks-cli auth login [--device]

auth login

Runs the loopback PKCE dance against the API’s authorization server: binds an ephemeral port on 127.0.0.1, opens a browser at /oauth/authorize?...&redirect_uri=http://127.0.0.1:<port>/callback, waits for exactly one callback, and exchanges the code at POST /oauth/token. The browser drives you through password + passkey sign-in and the consent screen; the terminal just waits.

$ openbooks-cli auth login
Opening your browser to sign in…
Signed in. Credentials are in the macOS Keychain.

If a browser can’t be opened (a headless box over SSH), it falls back to the device grant automatically rather than failing:

$ openbooks-cli auth login
Opening your browser to sign in…
Couldn't open a browser here — switching to a code you can enter elsewhere.

  Go to http://localhost:38080/device and enter this code:

      ABCD-EFGH

  Waiting… (Ctrl-C to stop)

auth login --device

The device grant (RFC 8628), driven directly rather than as a fallback — useful any time there’s no browser on this machine at all. --api/OPENBOOKS_API still has to point at the right server, but there’s no loopback listener and nothing to open here:

$ openbooks-cli auth login --device

  Go to http://localhost:38080/device and enter this code:

      ABCD-EFGH

  Waiting… (Ctrl-C to stop)
Signed in. Credentials are in the Secret Service.

--device opens a browser as a convenience if one exists (to verification_uri_complete, which prefills the code), but the instruction printed above the wait is the real mechanism — this grant exists for the case where no browser can open at all. See the device grant for the four polling outcomes and what each one means for a script watching this loop, and Screens for what the person on the other end sees.

--api/OPENBOOKS_API must match the API’s own canonical origin exactly, or the browser shows a raw 400 invalid_request instead of a sign-in page, and the terminal sits waiting on the loopback listener until you Ctrl-C it — there is no timeout. The login URL’s resource parameter is checked against canonical_resource() (WEB_ORIGIN’s API-side counterpart, default http://localhost:38081), and that check is exact. Concretely, OPENBOOKS_API=http://127.0.0.1:38081 openbooks-cli auth login fails against a default-configured API even though 127.0.0.1 and localhost reach the same server — the audience check treats them as different origins. Use whichever hostname the API was actually started with.

auth logout

Revokes the grant at the server (POST /oauth/revoke, with the stored refresh token) and then deletes the stored credentials file. Revoking the refresh token also revokes the access token it minted. The server call is best-effort — an unreachable API still leaves this signed out and the credentials file gone.

$ openbooks-cli auth logout
signed out — stored credentials removed

auth status

Reports who’s signed in by calling GET /auth/me with the stored access token, without touching the refresh token.

$ openbooks-cli auth status
signed in as demo@example.com

$ openbooks-cli auth status
not signed in — run: openbooks auth login

auth token

Prints the stored access token, bare, for scripts:

$ export TOK=$(openbooks-cli auth token)
$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOK" http://localhost:38081/accounts

Fails with not signed in — run: openbooks auth login if nothing is stored.

A 401 refreshes once and retries

Every other subcommand — accounts, balances, transactions, income, balance-sheet, record — shares one HTTP client (openbooks-cli/src/api.rs) that, on a 401 from the API, checks for a stored refresh token and, if there is one, exchanges it (grant_type=refresh_token) and retries the original request exactly once with the new access token. If the refresh itself fails — the refresh token is also dead — the command reports the same “not signed in” hint rather than looping. This retry is silent: a script piping --json output never sees the intermediate 401.

accounts

List every account and its id.

Usage: openbooks-cli accounts [OPTIONS]

No arguments beyond the globals. Output is a table of id, name, and kind (Asset, Liability, Equity, Income, Expense) in text mode, or the raw Account[] JSON with --json.

$ openbooks-cli accounts
    1  Checking Account   Asset
    2  Cash Box           Asset
    3  Dues               Income
    7  Food               Expense

$ openbooks-cli accounts --json | jq '.[] | select(.kind == "asset")'
{
  "id": 1,
  "name": "Checking Account",
  "kind": "asset"
}

balances

Balance of every account, as a two-column table (account, balance) with no total row — this is a flat listing, not a statement.

Usage: openbooks-cli balances [OPTIONS]

No arguments beyond the globals.

$ openbooks-cli balances
Checking Account   $6,811.50
Cash Box              $76.60
Food                  $565.00

transactions

Individual transactions, newest first.

Usage: openbooks-cli transactions [OPTIONS] --from <FROM> --to <TO>

Option	Required	Default	Meaning
--from <FROM>	no	"" (unset)	Only transactions on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
--to <TO>	no	"" (unset)	Only transactions on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).

Both flags default to an empty string, which the client omits from the request entirely rather than sending from= — so leaving both off returns every transaction. Neither flag is validated as a date by the CLI itself; it’s passed straight to the API as a query parameter.

Each text-mode row shows id, date, amount, a truncated description (28 characters, with an ellipsis), and a flow summary like Food ← Checking Account (where the money landed, then where it came from).

$ openbooks-cli transactions --from 2026-01-01 --to 2026-03-31
   42  2026-03-05        $45.00  Meeting pizza                Food ← Checking Account
   41  2026-02-14       $196.50  February dues                Checking Account ← Dues

income

Money in, money out, and the net for a period — the CLI’s rendering of the API’s income statement.

Usage: openbooks-cli income --from <FROM> --to <TO> [OPTIONS]

Option	Required	Meaning
--from <FROM>	yes	Start of the period (YYYY-MM-DD).
--to <TO>	yes	End of the period (YYYY-MM-DD).

Unlike transactions, both dates are required and validated: require_date in cli.rs rejects an empty or unparsable value, and the command also rejects --to being before --from. Text mode lists non-zero income and expense lines each with a total, then “Left over” (net positive) or “Short by” (net negative).

$ openbooks-cli income --from 2026-04-01 --to 2026-06-30
Money in and out — 2026-04-01 through 2026-06-30

MONEY IN
Dues       $1,965.00
--------------------
Total in   $4,200.00

MONEY OUT
Food         $565.00
----------------------
Total out  $2,610.00

Left over: $1,590.00

balance-sheet

What we hold and owe, as of one date.

Usage: openbooks-cli balance-sheet --as-of <AS_OF> [OPTIONS]

Option	Required	Meaning
--as-of <AS_OF>	yes	The date to report as of (YYYY-MM-DD).

Text mode prints three sections — “WHAT WE HAVE” (assets), “WHAT WE OWE” (liabilities), and “OUR MONEY” (equity, plus a synthesized “Kept from all activity to date” line for retained earnings) — each with a total. If the totals don’t balance (assets ≠ liabilities + equity), it prints a warning line rather than failing; this is a tripwire for a script piping the output, not a fatal error.

$ openbooks-cli balance-sheet --as-of 2026-06-30
What we hold and owe — as of 2026-06-30

WHAT WE HAVE
Checking Account   $6,666.50
--------------------------
Total              $7,151.50

WHAT WE OWE
Unpaid Bills         $360.00
----------------------------
Total owed           $360.00

OUR MONEY
Opening Balance             $2,700.00
Kept from all activity to date  $4,091.50
------------------------------------
Total                       $6,791.50

record

Record money received, spent, or moved. This is the only mutating command.

Usage: openbooks-cli record [OPTIONS] --amount <AMOUNT> --account <ACCOUNT> --category <CATEGORY> --date <DATE> --description <DESCRIPTION> <KIND>

Argument/Option	Required	Meaning
<KIND> (positional)	yes	in, out, or transfer — what happened.
--amount <AMOUNT>	yes	Dollars, e.g. 45 or 45.50. Parsed to integer cents, never through a float.
--account <ACCOUNT>	yes	The bank or cash account, by name, unambiguous name prefix, or id.
--category <CATEGORY>	yes	An income/expense category for in/out, or the destination account for transfer. Same name/prefix/id resolution as --account.
--date <DATE>	yes	When it happened (YYYY-MM-DD).
--description <DESCRIPTION>	yes	Short description; must not be blank.

KIND determines which side of the transaction is debited (legs() in openbooks-cli/src/api.rs):

• in — money received. Debits --account, credits --category.
• out — money spent. Debits --category, credits --account.
• transfer — money moved between two accounts. Debits --category (read here as “destination account”), credits --account.

Account resolution (find() in cli.rs) tries, in order: exact numeric id, exact case-insensitive name match, then an unambiguous case-insensitive name prefix. A prefix matching more than one account (e.g. --account F when both “Food” and “Fees” exist) is a hard error rather than a guess, and the error message lists the candidates. --account and --category resolving to the same account id is also rejected.

On success, text mode prints a one-line confirmation; --json prints {"id": <transaction id>, "recorded_cents": <cents>}.

$ openbooks-cli record out --amount 45.00 --account checking --category Food \
    --date 2026-03-05 --description "Meeting pizza"
Recorded $45.00 — Meeting pizza (2026-03-05)

$ openbooks-cli record in --amount 25 --account "Cash Box" --category Dues \
    --date 2026-04-01 --description "Cash dues, April meeting" --json
{
  "id": 43,
  "recorded_cents": 2500
}

There is no delete subcommand — deleting a transaction is only available from the TUI’s History tab (the d key), or directly against the API.