Kombai CLI

Design UI with Kombai from your coding agent. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any agent with a terminal runs kombai to get design directions grounded in your repo, write each design as HTML on a hosted Kombai canvas, and check its thumbnail. You review the designs on the canvas in your browser.

Requirements

• Node.js 20 or later
• A Kombai account
• For thumbnails, a Chromium browser: Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc or Chromium. Without one, kombai browser install downloads a headless Chromium (about 100 MB) after asking. That download is x86-64 only on Linux: on ARM, install your distribution's chromium and point the CLI at it with kombai config browser <path>.

Getting started

There is nothing to install. Agents run every command through npx (the Kombai plugin pins the version it runs):

npx -y @kombai/cli@latest skill     # the agent's instructions
npx -y @kombai/cli@latest login     # sign in through your browser

login prints a match code and opens a Kombai page in your browser. Approve the sign-in there only if the code matches the one in your terminal.

kombai guest tries Kombai without an account, on one canvas, and kombai login later keeps that canvas.

Commands

| Area | Commands | | ----------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Instructions | skill | | Sign-in | login, logout, whoami, guest, claim | | Account | credits | | Design directions | taste start, taste wait | | Canvases | canvas create, canvas list, canvas pull, canvas push, canvas url, canvas open, canvas share, canvas delete | | Designs | node start, node lock, node unlock, node pull, node push, asset push | | Design systems | ds list, ds pull, ds push, ds delete | | Thumbnails | screenshot fill, screenshot wait, browser install, config browser | | Settings | config org | | MCP server | mcp (the agent starts it): the canvas view and cards in Codex, the taste card in Claude desktop's Code tab |

kombai --help lists them with what each does, kombai <command> --help gives one command's flags, kombai canvas --help (or ds, node or any other command's first word) gives the flags of every command that starts with that word, and kombai --version prints the version to quote in a bug report.

Output

Each command prints one JSON line on stdout (--pretty indents it) and exits with:

| Code | Meaning | | ---- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 0 | Done | | 1 | Failed; the line's error says why | | 2 | Refused: someone else changed it, or a local edit was not pushed; pull or merge, then run it again | | 3 | Not signed in; run the line's next (kombai skill sign-in) | | 4 | Timed out; run the line's next to carry on |

An error line carries a code, a message, and often a next: the command to run next.

What it keeps on your machine

Your sign-in key is saved under ~/.kombai/cli, in a file only your user can read. kombai logout deletes it here and on Kombai's servers.

The first command on a machine also removes the skills the Kombai desktop app wrote into your agents' skills folders (design-with-kombai and the rest, in ~/.claude/skills, ~/.agents/skills and the like), since they drive the app rather than the CLI. Only the app's own copies are removed.

The CLI sends Kombai a usage event for each command (which command ran, how it ended and how long it took) and reports unexpected errors, so problems can be fixed. Set DO_NOT_TRACK=1 to turn both off.

Support

Email [email protected] with what you ran, the JSON line it printed, and the version kombai --version prints.

License

Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Kombai INC. All rights reserved. The Kombai CLI is proprietary software; the terms are in the LICENSE file in this package. It bundles open-source packages, which keep their own licenses: dist/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt lists each one with its license text.