@mirage-cli/airtable-cli

Read-only CLI for the Airtable Web API — bases, table schema, and records. Every command is a GET; the client has no create/update/delete surface, so it's safe to hand to an LLM driver.

The command names mirror the Airtable MCP server's read tools — the same vocabulary the official @airtable/mcp-cli discovers from the server — with that CLI's flag names (--baseId, --tableIdOrName, --recordId). The difference: this hits the stable Airtable Web API directly (no live MCP connection, no experimental tool churn), and the 7 write tools are intentionally absent.

bun add -g @mirage-cli/airtable-cli   # installs the `airtable` bin
airtable --help

Credentials

A single personal access token (PAT) used as a bearer — the legacy API-key auth was removed by Airtable in Feb 2024. One PAT covers whichever bases you granted it, so there's no profile store; you just pick a base.

token:  --token > AIRTABLE_API_KEY > AIRTABLE_TOKEN
base:   --baseId (per command) > --base > AIRTABLE_BASE_ID

export AIRTABLE_API_KEY=patXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
airtable whoami                  # token's user id + scopes
airtable list-bases             # discover base ids
export AIRTABLE_BASE_ID=appXXXXXXXX

Commands (= Airtable MCP read tools)

# Bases & schema
airtable list-bases
airtable list-tables --baseId appXXX --detailLevel identifiersOnly   # alias: airtable schema
airtable describe-table --baseId appXXX --tableIdOrName Tasks

# Records
airtable list-records --baseId appXXX --tableIdOrName Tasks \
  --view "Grid view" --fields Name,Status --filterByFormula "{Status}='Done'" \
  --sort Name --sort CreatedAt:desc --maxRecords 500 --all
airtable get-record --baseId appXXX --tableIdOrName Tasks --recordId recXXX
airtable search-records --baseId appXXX --tableIdOrName Tasks --searchTerm acme

--tableIdOrName accepts a table name or id; -t/--table is a short alias. --detailLevel is one of full (default), identifiersOnly, tableIdentifiersOnly. search-records builds an Airtable SEARCH() formula over --fields (or, if omitted, every field in the table's schema).

Raw GET escape hatch

Anything the named commands don't model is one GET away:

airtable api /meta/bases
airtable api /appXXX/Tasks -q maxRecords=3 -q "fields[]=Name"

Pagination & output

• Airtable paginates with an offset cursor. --all walks every page (up to --maxRecords, uncapped if unset). --pageSize ≤ 100.
• -f, --format json|jsonl|table|csv — default json (raw envelope, jq-friendly). table/csv lift each record's fields.* up to top-level columns (so Name is a column, not a nested blob).

Environment variables

| Var | Purpose | | --- | --- | | AIRTABLE_API_KEY | Personal access token (bearer). AIRTABLE_TOKEN is an accepted alias. | | AIRTABLE_BASE_ID | Default base id appXXXXXXXX (override per command with --baseId). | | AIRTABLE_API_BASE_URL | Override the API base (default https://api.airtable.com/v0). |

Worker compatibility

Pure fetch, GET-only — no Node-only imports at all. Runs unchanged under workerd.