Tessera and Data Elements CLI

The CLI and data-elements.dev registry are implemented and tested in this repository but are not publicly published yet. The npx commands below are the release interface; use node packages/cli/index.js with DATA_ELEMENTS_REGISTRY_URL=http://localhost:3000/r/ for repository-local development.

data-elements remains the backwards-compatible installer for editable artifact components. tessera is the public command for the local database analysis workspace.

Tessera Studio

Start Studio from any directory inside a Tessera project with a configured PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or Turso database. The published one-off command is:

npx data-elements@latest studio

After installing data-elements globally, the equivalent command is:

tessera studio

The command searches upward for tessera.config.ts. Keep database connection strings and model-provider keys in that server-only config file, normally by reading environment variables there.

For an explicit one-off connection, pass one supported database URL as a positional argument. It overrides database.url for that run only. Tessera never logs the URL, but it can still appear in your shell history and process listings, so a config plus environment variable remains the recommended project setup.

tessera studio postgresql://readonly:[email protected]:5432/warehouse
tessera studio mysql://readonly:[email protected]:3306/warehouse
tessera studio file:/absolute/path/to/warehouse.db
TURSO_AUTH_TOKEN=... tessera studio libsql://warehouse-org.turso.io

SQLite accepts file: and sqlite: URLs that reference an existing local database file. Turso accepts libsql: and turso: URLs; keep its credential outside the URL in database.authToken or TURSO_AUTH_TOKEN.

Choose a config file or local listener explicitly when needed:

tessera studio --config ./config/tessera.config.ts --host 127.0.0.1 --port 4310

Studio accepts at most one positional database URL. Only --config, --host, and --port are valid options. The CLI runs the built Studio with the current Bun runtime or with Node.js 24+, through an argument array with no shell.

Install the complete editable component catalog:

npx data-elements@latest

Install one or more artifacts:

npx data-elements@latest add query-artifact metric-artifact

Verify the installed compatibility lock and every locked source hash:

npx data-elements@latest doctor

The CLI delegates to the official shadcn CLI and follows the package manager that invoked it. Generated source is installed under the components directory configured in the host project's components.json.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 24 or later
• Bun 1.3 or later
• A React project with Tailwind CSS
• A valid shadcn components.json (the shadcn CLI can initialize one when it is missing)

The default command installs the artifact-ui item. It copies only editable React UI source; the browser-safe schema, core, and runtime remain exact-version npm dependencies.

Before an update, the CLI reads data-elements.lock.json from the components alias configured by components.json. An unchanged official installation can be updated normally. If a locked file was changed, removed, or has an invalid hash, the installation becomes custom/unverified and the CLI refuses to overwrite it.

Use --force only when you intend to replace local changes:

npx data-elements@latest --force

--force is an overwrite operation, not a three-way merge. Preserve or commit local changes before using it. add accepts any published registry item and removes duplicate names before invoking shadcn. Set DATA_ELEMENTS_REGISTRY_URL only when testing a local registry; remote registries must use HTTPS.