CLI Reference

The wheels binary is the single entry point for everything you do with a Wheels app from the terminal — scaffolding a new project, generating code, running migrations, running tests, starting the dev server, inspecting routes, driving the REPL. One install, one name on your $PATH.

You’ll use this for:

• Creating a new Wheels project and scaffolding models, controllers, views, and migrations.
• Your daily dev loop — wheels generate, wheels migrate, wheels test, wheels server — without leaving the shell.
• Inspecting and diagnosing an app you didn’t write — routes, stats, dependency checks, and the built-in REPL.

Two surfaces in one command

The v4 wheels binary is LuCLI renamed, with a Wheels Module bolted on. LuCLI is a general-purpose CFML command runner — it provides the server lifecycle, REPL, CFML execution, system and secrets helpers, module and dependency management, AI helpers, and shell completion. The Wheels Module adds the framework-specific commands — generate, migrate, seed, test, routes, console, and the rest. Both surfaces dispatch from the same binary:

• wheels generate model User — Wheels Module command.
• wheels server start — LuCLI core command.

You don’t install them separately, and you don’t switch contexts between them. Everything below is namespaced by which surface it comes from so you know where a given feature lives, but from your terminal it’s all wheels <subcommand>.

Getting started

Installation Homebrew, Chocolatey, manual tarball, and PATH sanity checks.

Quick Start From a fresh shell to a running Wheels app in under five minutes.

Configuration How LuCLI and the Wheels Module are configured — profiles, env, module.json.

Wheels commands

Framework-specific commands contributed by the Wheels Module. These are what you reach for daily.

Creating a Project wheels new and wheels create app — scaffolding a fresh Wheels project.

Code Generation wheels generate — models, controllers, views, migrations, scaffolds, routes, tests.

Database wheels migrate, wheels seed, and wheels db — schema and seed data workflows.

Dev Server wheels start, wheels stop, wheels reload — running your app locally.

Testing wheels test and wheels browser — running specs and the Playwright-driven browser suite.

App Inspection wheels routes, wheels info, wheels stats, wheels notes — reading the shape of an app.

Code Quality wheels analyze, wheels validate, wheels doctor — lint and health checks.

Scaffold Cleanup wheels destroy — undo a generator cleanly.

Console & REPL wheels console — interactive CFML with your app loaded.

Upgrade wheels upgrade — scan for breaking changes before moving to a new framework version.

Core commands (LuCLI)

General-purpose commands inherited from LuCLI. Available in any CFML project, Wheels or not.

Server lucli server — the persistent CFML server process that serves your app.

CFML Execution lucli cfml and lucli run — one-shot CFML evaluation and script execution.

System & Secrets lucli system and lucli secrets — inspect the runtime and manage per-profile secrets.

Modules & Deps lucli modules and lucli deps — installing modules and managing dependencies.

AI & Completion lucli ai and lucli completion — AI helpers and shell completion setup.

MCP integration

The wheels binary exposes its commands as MCP tools so an AI agent can drive the same operations you run from the terminal. wheels mcp wheels is the canonical stdio surface — auto-discovered from cli/lucli/Module.cfc and usable from any MCP-aware client. A handful of CLI-only commands (start, stop, new, console, browser, d, and the mcp meta command itself) are hidden from the MCP tool list because their semantics don’t translate to a single tool call. A legacy HTTP endpoint at /wheels/mcp still exists for backward compatibility but is deprecated — prefer the stdio surface for new integrations. See MCP Integration for setup, the full tool catalog, and the deprecation timeline.