Seedmancer CLI Documentation

Overview

Seedmancer helps developers reset databases to a known state instantly. It stores test data as plain CSV files versioned by name, making it easy to check in, share, and restore across machines and CI pipelines.

Installation

Download the pre-built binary for your platform from GitHub Releases.

curl -L https://github.com/KazanKK/seedmancer/releases/download/v0.1.0/seedmancer_Linux_arm64 -o seedmancer
chmod +x seedmancer
mv seedmancer /usr/local/bin/seedmancer

curl -L https://github.com/KazanKK/seedmancer/releases/download/v0.1.0/seedmancer_Linux_x86_64 -o seedmancer
chmod +x seedmancer
mv seedmancer /usr/local/bin/seedmancer

curl -L https://github.com/KazanKK/seedmancer/releases/download/v0.1.0/seedmancer_Darwin_arm64 -o seedmancer
chmod +x seedmancer
sudo mv seedmancer /usr/local/bin/seedmancer

Quick Start

Get up and running in three commands.

seedmancer init

seedmancer export \
  --database-name mydb \
  --version-name baseline \
  --db-url "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"

seedmancer seed \
  --database-name mydb \
  --version-name baseline \
  --db-url "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"

Configuration File

Seedmancer reads seedmancer.yaml from your project root. All flag values can be set here so you don't need to repeat them on every command.

storage_path: .seedmancer
database_name: mydb
database_url: postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb

Initialize a new Seedmancer project. Creates seedmancer.yaml and the storage directory. When run interactively in a terminal, prompts for each value. Existing values in seedmancer.yaml are used as defaults.

seedmancer init

# Non-interactive (CI)
seedmancer init \
  --storage-path .seedmancer \
  --database-name mydb \
  --database-url "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"

Export the current database schema and data to local CSV files. Creates schema.json (table definitions) and one .csv file per table inside the version directory.

seedmancer export \
  --database-name mydb \
  --version-name baseline \
  --db-url "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"

# Output: .seedmancer/databases/mydb/baseline/
#   schema.json
#   users.csv
#   orders.csv
#   ...

• You can directly edit the exported CSV files to adjust test data.
• Do not manually edit schema.json — it is read by the seed command to recreate the correct structure.
• --db-url falls back to database_url in seedmancer.yaml when omitted.

Restore the database to a previously exported version. Drops existing data in each table and reloads it from the saved CSV files in the version directory.

seedmancer seed \
  --database-name mydb \
  --version-name baseline \
  --db-url "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"

# CI / Docker Compose (env var)
export SEEDMANCER_DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@db:5432/mydb"
seedmancer seed --database-name mydb --version-name baseline

• Only PostgreSQL is supported in this release.
• The seed command reads from .seedmancer/databases/<database-name>/<version-name>/.

List all available databases and test data versions. By default shows both local (on disk) and remote (cloud) versions. Use --local or --remote to filter.

# List both local and remote
seedmancer list --token <your-api-token>

# Local only
seedmancer list --local

# Remote only
export SEEDMANCER_API_TOKEN=<your-api-token>
seedmancer list --remote

Download a database schema and test data version from the Seedmancer cloud API and extract it into your local storage directory. Replaces any existing local version with the same name.

seedmancer fetch \
  --database-name mydb \
  --version baseline \
  --token <your-api-token>

# Using environment variable
export SEEDMANCER_API_TOKEN=<your-api-token>
seedmancer fetch --database-name mydb --version baseline

• After fetching, run seedmancer seed to apply the downloaded version to your database.
• Fetched files are saved under .seedmancer/databases/<database-name>/<version>/.

Generate realistic seed data from a natural language prompt using OpenAI. Reads the live database schema, asks GPT-4o to produce a Go script, runs it, and saves the output as CSV files ready to be seeded.

seedmancer generate \
  --prompt "50 users with realistic names and emails, 200 orders each with a random user" \
  --api-key sk-... \
  --db-url "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb" \
  --database-name mydb \
  --version-name ai-generated

# Then seed it
seedmancer seed --database-name mydb --version-name ai-generated

• Requires Go to be installed on the machine — the generated script is executed with go run.
• The OpenAI API key is persisted to ~/.seedmancer/config.yaml after the first use, so --api-key is only needed once.
• Only PostgreSQL is supported for schema export in this release.
• Generated data is deterministic: the script uses math/rand seeded with 42.

Environment Variables

All sensitive values can be provided as environment variables instead of flags. Environment variables take lower priority than explicit flags.

export SEEDMANCER_DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"
export SEEDMANCER_API_TOKEN="your-api-token"
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

seedmancer export --database-name mydb --version-name v1
seedmancer seed   --database-name mydb --version-name v1
seedmancer fetch  --database-name mydb --version v1
seedmancer list   --remote