CLI - Command-Line Interface¶

The grai.build CLI provides a Typer-based command-line interface for working with knowledge graph projects.

Overview¶

The CLI exposes five main commands:

grai init - Initialize a new project
grai validate - Validate entity and relation definitions
grai build - Build project by compiling to Cypher
grai compile - Compile without validation
grai info - Show project information and statistics

Installation¶

pip install grai-build

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/grai-build/grai.build
cd grai.build
pip install -e .

Commands¶

`grai init`¶

Initialize a new grai.build project with example entities and relations.

Usage:

grai init [PATH] [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

PATH - Directory to initialize project in (default: .)

Options:

--name, -n TEXT - Project name (default: my-knowledge-graph)
--force, -f - Overwrite existing files
--help - Show help message

Examples:

# Initialize in current directory
grai init

# Initialize in specific directory with custom name
grai init my-project --name my-graph

# Overwrite existing project
grai init my-project --force

Created Structure:

my-project/
├── grai.yml              # Project configuration
├── README.md             # Project documentation
├── entities/             # Entity definitions
│   ├── customer.yml
│   └── product.yml
├── relations/            # Relation definitions
│   └── purchased.yml
└── target/               # Compiled output
    └── neo4j/
        └── compiled.cypher

`grai validate`¶

Validate entity and relation definitions for correctness and consistency.

Usage:

grai validate [PROJECT_DIR] [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

PROJECT_DIR - Path to grai.build project directory (default: .)

Options:

--strict, -s - Treat warnings as errors
--verbose, -v - Show detailed validation output
--help - Show help message

Examples:

# Validate current directory
grai validate

# Validate specific project
grai validate my-project

# Strict mode (warnings as errors)
grai validate --strict

# Verbose output
grai validate --verbose

Validation Checks:

✅ Entity references exist
✅ Key mappings are valid
✅ No duplicate property names
✅ No duplicate entity/relation names
✅ No circular dependencies
✅ Required fields are present

Output:

🔍 Validating project...

✓ Loaded project: my-graph (v1.0.0)
  - 2 entities
  - 1 relations

✓ Validation passed!

`grai build`¶

Build the project by validating and compiling to Neo4j Cypher.

Usage:

grai build [PROJECT_DIR] [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

PROJECT_DIR - Path to grai.build project directory (default: .)

Options:

--output, -o PATH - Output directory (default: target/neo4j)
--filename, -f TEXT - Output filename (default: compiled.cypher)
--schema-only - Generate only schema (constraints and indexes)
--skip-validation - Skip validation before compiling
--verbose, -v - Show detailed build output
--help - Show help message

Examples:

# Build current directory
grai build

# Build with custom output
grai build --output dist/cypher --filename my-graph.cypher

# Build schema only
grai build --schema-only

# Build without validation
grai build --skip-validation

# Verbose output with build summary
grai build --verbose

Output:

🔨 Building project...

✓ Loaded project: my-graph (v1.0.0)
→ Validating...
✓ Validation passed
→ Compiling to Cypher...
✓ Compiled successfully
✓ Wrote output to: target/neo4j/compiled.cypher

✓ Build complete!

     Build Summary
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ Metric      ┃ Count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ Entities    │ 2     │
│ Relations   │ 1     │
│ Constraints │ 2     │
│ Indexes     │ 8     │
│ Statements  │ 3     │
└─────────────┴───────┘

`grai compile`¶

Compile project to Cypher without validation. This is an alias for grai build --skip-validation.

Usage:

grai compile [PROJECT_DIR] [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

PROJECT_DIR - Path to grai.build project directory (default: .)

Options:

--output, -o PATH - Output directory (default: target/neo4j)
--help - Show help message

Examples:

# Compile without validation
grai compile

# Compile to custom directory
grai compile --output dist/cypher

Use Case:

Use compile when you've already validated and just want to regenerate the Cypher output. Use build for the full validation + compilation workflow.

`grai info`¶

Show project information and statistics.

Usage:

grai info [PROJECT_DIR]

Arguments:

PROJECT_DIR - Path to grai.build project directory (default: .)

Options:

--help - Show help message

Examples:

# Show info for current directory
grai info

# Show info for specific project
grai info my-project

Output:

📊 Project Information

         Project: my-graph
┌──────────────────────┬───────┐
│ Name                 │ my-graph │
│ Version              │ 1.0.0 │
│ Entities             │ 2     │
│ Relations            │ 1     │
│ Entity Properties    │ 10    │
│ Relation Properties  │ 4     │
└──────────────────────┴───────┘

                  Entities
┏━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Entity   ┃ Source              ┃ Keys    ┃ Properties ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ customer │ analytics.customers │ cust_id │ 5          │
│ product  │ analytics.products  │ prod_id │ 5          │
└──────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────┴────────────┘

                   Relations
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Relation  ┃ From → To          ┃ Source           ┃ Properties ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ PURCHASED │ customer → product │ analytics.orders │ 4          │
└───────────┴────────────────────┴──────────────────┴────────────┘

Global Options¶

All commands support these global options:

--version, -v - Show version and exit
--help - Show help message and exit

Examples:

# Show version
grai --version

# Show general help
grai --help

# Show help for specific command
grai build --help

Complete Workflows¶

Basic Workflow¶

# 1. Initialize project
grai init my-graph-project --name my-graph

# 2. Edit definitions
cd my-graph-project
vim entities/customer.yml
vim relations/purchased.yml

# 3. Validate
grai validate

# 4. Build
grai build

# 5. View output
cat target/neo4j/compiled.cypher

Development Workflow¶

# Initialize
grai init

# Iterate: edit, validate, build
vim entities/new-entity.yml
grai validate
grai build --verbose

# Check project stats
grai info

Production Workflow¶

# Validate in CI/CD
grai validate --strict

# Build for deployment
grai build --output dist/cypher --filename production.cypher

# Schema-only for database initialization
grai build --schema-only --filename schema.cypher

Error Handling¶

The CLI provides clear error messages with exit codes:

0 - Success
1 - Error (validation failure, file not found, etc.)

Example Errors:

$ grai validate

✗ Validation failed!

Errors:
  ✗  Relation 'PURCHASED' references unknown entity 'order'
  ✗  Entity 'customer' has duplicate property 'email'

$ grai build

✗ Error: grai.yml not found
Hint: Run 'grai init' to create a new project

Rich Output¶

The CLI uses Rich for beautiful, colored terminal output:

✓ Green checkmarks for success
✗ Red X marks for errors
⚠ Yellow warnings
→ Cyan arrows for progress
📊 Tables for structured data
🚀 Emoji for visual context

Environment Variables¶

Currently, grai.build doesn't use environment variables, but future versions may support:

GRAI_HOME - Default project directory
GRAI_OUTPUT_DIR - Default output directory
GRAI_NEO4J_URI - Default Neo4j connection URI

Shell Completion¶

Shell completion is currently disabled but may be added in future versions.

API¶

The CLI can also be used programmatically:

from typer.testing import CliRunner
from grai.cli.main import app

runner = CliRunner()
result = runner.invoke(app, ["validate", "my-project"])

if result.exit_code == 0:
    print("Validation passed!")
else:
    print(f"Error: {result.stdout}")

Contributing¶

To add new CLI commands:

Add command function to grai/cli/main.py
Decorate with @app.command()
Add tests to tests/test_cli.py
Update this documentation

Example:

@app.command()
def my_command(
    arg: str = typer.Argument(..., help="My argument"),
    option: bool = typer.Option(False, "--option", "-o", help="My option"),
):
    """My command description."""
    console.print(f"Running my command with {arg}")
    # Implementation here

Troubleshooting¶

Command not found¶

If grai command is not found after installation:

# Reinstall in editable mode
pip install -e .

# Or use full path
python -m grai.cli.main --help

Import errors¶

If you see import errors:

# Install dependencies
pip install pydantic pyyaml typer rich neo4j

# Or install with dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Permission errors¶

If you get permission errors when writing files:

# Check directory permissions
ls -la

# Use sudo (not recommended for user projects)
sudo grai build

# Or change output directory
grai build --output ~/my-graphs

Version: 0.1.0 Last Updated: January 2025

CLI - Command-Line Interface¶

Overview¶

Installation¶

Commands¶

grai init¶

grai validate¶

grai build¶

grai compile¶

grai info¶

Global Options¶

Complete Workflows¶

Basic Workflow¶

Development Workflow¶

Production Workflow¶

Error Handling¶

Rich Output¶

Environment Variables¶

Shell Completion¶

API¶

See Also¶

Contributing¶

Troubleshooting¶

Command not found¶

Import errors¶

Permission errors¶

`grai init`¶

`grai validate`¶

`grai build`¶

`grai compile`¶

`grai info`¶