CLI Overview

Daemon-first dockerman CLI for scripting Docker, Kubernetes, Compose, and Trivy workflows from the terminal.

dockerman is a thin command-line client that talks to the local dockerman-daemon over an authenticated IPC socket. Every feature you can drive from the GUI — containers, images, Compose, Kubernetes read-only, Trivy, Docker Hub, tunnels, WSL — is also reachable from the CLI. Added in v5.3.0.

The CLI auto-starts dockerman-daemon on demand. You do not need to launch the GUI to use it.

Install

The CLI ships bundled inside the Dockerman desktop app — there is no separate dockerman-cli package to download.

Install the desktop app

Follow Getting Started to install the GUI for your platform (macOS DMG, Windows MSI, or Linux package).

Enable the CLI for your user

Open Dockerman → Settings → CLI and click Install for this user. This creates a small wrapper at ~/.local/bin/dockerman (macOS / Linux) or the equivalent user-bin on Windows that forwards every invocation to the bundled binary inside the app.

If the install directory is not on your PATH, the panel shows the exact line to add to your shell profile.

Verify

dockerman --version
dockerman --help

The first command that needs a backend spawns dockerman-daemon, writes daemon-ipc.json into the app data directory, and reuses that handshake for every subsequent call.

Global flags

Flag	Purpose
`--host <id>`	Target a specific Docker host. Use `LOCALHOST` for the local socket, or any host id from `dockerman host current`.
`--pretty`	Render human-friendly tables instead of raw JSON (only on commands that opt in).
`--yes` / `-y`	Confirm a destructive command. Required for `remove`, `prune`, `restore`, `tunnel create`, `wsl unregister`, etc.

Pick a host

dockerman host current
dockerman host use my-remote
dockerman --host LOCALHOST container list

host use writes the selection to disk; subsequent commands without --host use it. Pass --host per-command when you want to override without changing the sticky selection.

System and connectivity

dockerman system info
dockerman system df
dockerman system ping 8.8.8.8
dockerman system prune --containers --volumes --yes

Schema and discovery

Every RPC the daemon exposes is described in a versioned schema. Use it to discover commands, generate clients, or feed an LLM tool registry.

dockerman schema
dockerman schema --format mcp-tools
dockerman schema fetch_logs

The current schema version is 2. See Streaming contract for the unary vs streaming distinction.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	Success, or stream ended naturally
`1`	Generic failure (validation, RPC error, stream body error)
`3`	Discovery or handshake failure (daemon not reachable)
`4`	Streaming heartbeat timeout (no frame for 30s)
`130`	`SIGINT` (Ctrl+C) on a streaming command
`143`	`SIGTERM` on a streaming command

Use it from AI assistants

If you drive dockerman from an AI assistant, install the official plugin so the assistant knows the command map, output shapes, and destructive-action rules without re-discovering them.

Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add mandocker/skills
/plugin install dockerman

Codex:

codex plugin marketplace add mandocker/skills

Then run /plugins in Codex and install or enable the Dockerman plugin from the Dockerman marketplace. See AI Assistant Plugins for what the plugin bundles and how to pin a revision.

What the CLI does not cover

Some workflows live only in the GUI:

Scheduler tasks and notification channels
Alert rules (preset rules run on the daemon, but creation/edit is GUI-only)
Time-series metrics history

The full list of CLI commands matches dockerman --help. The pages in this section group them by domain.

CLI Overview

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