Prisma CLI

The Prisma command line interface (CLI) is the primary way to interact with your Prisma project from the command line. It can initialize new project assets, generate Prisma Client, and analyze existing database structures through introspection to automatically create your application models.

Command reference

See Prisma CLI command reference for a complete list of commands.

Installation

The Prisma CLI is typically installed locally as a development dependency, that's why the --save-dev (npm) and --dev (Yarn) options are used in the commands below.

npm

Install with npm:

npm install prisma --save-dev

Yarn

Install with yarn:

yarn add prisma --dev

pnpm

Install with pnpm:

pnpm install prisma --save-dev

Bun

Install with Bun:

bun add prisma

Usage

If you installed Prisma as a development dependency, you need to prefix the prisma command with your package runner.

npm

npx prisma

Yarn

yarn prisma

pnpm

pnpm dlx prisma

Bun

bunx prisma

Synopsis

The prisma command can be called from command line once installed. When called without arguments, it will display its command usage and help document:

prisma

Show CLI results

$ npx prisma

    ◭  Prisma is a modern DB toolkit to query, migrate and model your database (https://prisma.io)

    Usage

      $ prisma [command]

    Commands

                init   Set up Prisma for your app
            generate   Generate artifacts (e.g. Prisma Client)
                  db   Manage your database schema and lifecycle
             migrate   Migrate your database
              studio   Browse your data with Prisma Studio
            validate   Validate your Prisma schema
              format   Format your Prisma schema
             version   Displays Prisma version info
               debug   Displays Prisma debug info
                 mcp   Starts an MCP server to use with AI development tools

    Flags

         --preview-feature   Run Preview Prisma commands
         --help, -h          Show additional information about a command

    Examples

      Set up a new Prisma project
      $ prisma init

      Generate artifacts (e.g. Prisma Client)
      $ prisma generate

      Browse your data
      $ prisma studio

      Create migrations from your Prisma schema, apply them to the database, generate artifacts (e.g. Prisma Client)
      $ prisma migrate dev

      Pull the schema from an existing database, updating the Prisma schema
      $ prisma db pull

      Push the Prisma schema state to the database
      $ prisma db push

      Validate your Prisma schema
      $ prisma validate

      Format your Prisma schema
      $ prisma format

      Display Prisma version info
      $ prisma version

      Display Prisma debug info
      $ prisma debug

You can get additional help on any of the prisma commands by adding the --help flag after the command.

Exit codes

All prisma CLI commands return the following codes when they exit:

• exit code 0 when a command runs successfully
• exit code 1 when a command errors
• exit code 130 when the CLI receives a signal interrupt (SIGINT) message or if the user cancels a prompt. This exit code is available in Prisma ORM versions 4.3.0 and later.

Telemetry

The term telemetry refers to the collection of certain usage data to help improve the quality of a piece of software. Prisma uses telemetry in two contexts:

• when it collects CLI usage data
• when it submits CLI error reports

This page describes the overall telemetry approach for Prisma, what kind of data is collected and how to opt-out of data collection.

Why does Prisma collect metrics?

Telemetry helps us better understand how many users are using our products and how often they are using our products. Unlike many telemetry services, our telemetry implementation is intentionally limited in scope and is actually useful for the developer:

• Limited in scope: We use telemetry to answer one question: how many monthly active developers are using Prisma CLI?
• Provides value: Our telemetry service also checks for version updates and offers security notices.

When is data collected?

Data is collected in two scenarios that are described below.

Usage data

Invocations of the prisma CLI and general usage of Studio results in data being sent to the telemetry server at https://checkpoint.prisma.io. Note that:

• The data does not include your schema or the data in your database
• Prisma only sends information after you execute a CLI command

Here is an overview of the data that's being submitted:

Field	Attributes	Description
product	string	Name of the product (e.g. prisma)
version	string	Currently installed version of the product (e.g. 1.0.0-rc0)
arch	string	Client's operating system architecture (e.g. amd64).
os	string	Client's operating system (e.g. darwin).
node_version	string	Client's node version (e.g. v12.12.0).
signature	string	Random, non-identifiable signature UUID (e.g. 91b014df3-9dda-4a27-a8a7-15474fd899f8)
user_agent	string	User agent of the checkpoint client (e.g. prisma/js-checkpoint)
timestamp	string	When the request was made in RFC3339 format (e.g. 2019-12-12T17:45:56Z)

You can opt-out of this behavior by setting the CHECKPOINT_DISABLE environment variable to 1, e.g.:

export CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1

Error reporting

Prisma potentially collects error data when there is a crash in the CLI.

Before an error report is submitted, there will always be a prompt asking you to confirm or deny the submission of the error report! Error reports are never submitted without your explicit consent!

How to opt-out of data collection?

Usage data

You can opt-out of usage data collection by setting the CHECKPOINT_DISABLE environment variable to 1, e.g.:

export CHECKPOINT_DISABLE=1

Error reporting

You can opt-out of data collection by responding to the interactive prompt with no.