Command line tool for Moleculer framework

Features

• Initialize new projects from templates (Handlebars & Nunjucks support)
• Create Moleculer services interactively
• Connect to a running Moleculer system with REPL
• Call service actions and emit events from the command line
• Start a local broker with REPL

Requirements

• Node.js >= 22

Install

npm install -g moleculer-cli

Usage

Initialize a new project

# Init from an official template
moleculer init project my-first-project

# Init a module
moleculer init module my-module

# Init from a GitHub repo
moleculer init username/repo my-project

# Init from a local template
moleculer init ./my-template my-project

# Provide answers from a JSON file (non-interactive)
moleculer init project my-project --answers answers.json

# Provide answers inline
moleculer init project my-project --@name=my-project --@description="My project"

# Skip npm install
moleculer init project my-project --no-install

Official templates

Create a service

# Create a service interactively
moleculer create service

# Create a named service
moleculer create service users

# Create a TypeScript service
moleculer create service users --typescript

Start a local broker

Start a new ServiceBroker locally and switch to REPL mode.

moleculer start

# With custom config
moleculer start -c moleculer.config.js

# With hot-reload
moleculer start --hot

Connect to a remote broker

Start a new ServiceBroker, connect to a transporter and switch to REPL mode.

# With TCP transporter
moleculer connect

# With NATS transporter
moleculer connect nats://localhost:4222

# With Redis transporter
moleculer connect redis://localhost

# With MQTT transporter
moleculer connect mqtt://localhost

Call a service action

# Call an action via NATS
moleculer call greeter.hello -t nats://localhost:4222

# Call with parameters (JSON after --)
moleculer call math.add -t nats://localhost:4222 -- --a=5 --b=3

Emit an event

# Emit an event
moleculer emit user.created -t nats://localhost:4222 -- --id=123

# Broadcast an event
moleculer emit user.created -t nats://localhost:4222 --broadcast -- --id=123

Alias a template

Save a template URL under a short name for use with moleculer init.

# Create an alias
moleculer alias-template my-template https://github.com/user/repo

# Use the alias
moleculer init my-template my-project

Documentation

Please read our documentation on Moleculer site

Credits

The moleculer-cli project init command is based on vue-cli project.

Contribution

Please send pull requests improving the usage and fixing bugs, improving documentation and providing better examples, or providing some testing, because these things are important.

License

Moleculer-cli is available under the MIT license.

Contact

Copyright (c) 2026 MoleculerJS