install

LiveWiki Install Command Orchestration

This page explains how the livewiki install CLI command detects installed coding agents and safely configures the livewiki MCP server entry, hook templates, shared skills, and optional pointer files.

When to use this page

• Understand the full user flow of the install command, from option parsing to applying changes.
• Trace how the command validates user input and enforces safety checks before any file is written.
• Learn how the command formats its output for both human-readable terminal display and JSON consumption.

How it fits

This module is the command-layer implementation for the livewiki CLI, responsible for coordinating the core @livewiki/core/install package. It handles user-facing concerns like option parsing, interactive prompting, and output formatting, then delegates the actual detection, planning, and application of changes to the core package's functions. The file is part of the CLI's command set, alongside other commands registered on the same commander program, and relies on shared helpers for emitting output and resolving the repository root.

The command's central policy is safety: it shows the user every intended action before writing anything, supports a full dry-run via --print, and refuses to write in non-interactive mode unless explicitly told to with --yes. It also implements an opt-in rule for writing pointer files, requiring a dedicated flag or an additional interactive confirmation.

Diagram

%% livewiki/diagrams/commands-install.mmd

Option Validation and Command Registration

This section is the entry point for the entire command. registerInstall exists to wire the install subcommand into the CLI's commander program, defining its options and the action that runs when the user invokes it. The function takes the program object and returns nothing; it registers the command, its description, all its flags, and the async callback that implements the command's behavior.