CLI Reference

ayame can open the native editor, run the local web editor, and process huge text files from a terminal. Commands are designed to stream or use bounded memory so they remain useful on files that are too large for ordinary editors.

Inspect and read files Search and transform Sort and aggregate Open the web editor Update or remove Copy an example

Usage

ayame <COMMAND> [OPTIONS]

No arguments open the native desktop window in GUI builds. Plain CLI builds print help.

Commands

Command	Purpose
stat <FILE>	Show file size, line count, encoding, EOL style, and index stats.
head <FILE> [-n N]	Print the first N lines. Default: 10.
tail <FILE> [-n N]	Print the last N lines. Default: 10.
line <FILE> <N>	Print one 1-based line.
lines <FILE> <START> <COUNT>	Print COUNT lines from START, both 1-based.
search <FILE> <PATTERN>	Search with literal, regex, ignore-case, whole-word, and max-result options.
sort <FILE>	External merge sort with memory-bounded spill files.
replace <FILE> <FIND> <REPL>	Streaming replace to a new output file.
case <FILE> <MODE>	Streaming case conversion (upper, lower, camel, pascal, snake, kebab, constant) to a new output file.
grep-lines <FILE> <PATTERN>	Extract only the matching lines to a new output file.
split <FILE> --lines N	Split a file into N-line parts.
group <FILE> -k COL	Group by a key column and count or aggregate values.
top <FILE> -k COL -n N	Keep the top N rows by key with bounded memory.
distinct <FILE> -k COL	Estimate distinct key count with HyperLogLog.
gen <FILE> --lines N	Generate synthetic test data.
serve [FILE]	Launch the local web editor.
gui [FILE]	Open the native desktop window when the GUI feature is built.
cache [path|info|gc|clear]	Inspect or clean the on-disk index cache.
update	Download, verify, and install the selected GitHub release artifact.
remove	Remove the installed Ayame binary or app bundle.
version	Print the Ayame version.

The former diff, sortdiff, and sort-diff commands were removed in v0.7.0. For one release they return an error naming the corresponding ayame-diff command. File comparison is available in ayame-diff.

Common Options

Option	Applies to	Notes
--encoding <ENC>	file-opening commands	Force utf8, utf-16le, utf-16be, shift_jis, euc-jp, iso-2022-jp, or ascii.
--stride <N>	file-opening commands	Lines per sparse-index checkpoint. Default: 4096.
--no-cache	file-opening commands	Disable persistent index-cache reads and writes.
--cache-dir <DIR>	file-opening commands	Override the index-cache directory.
--json	stat, search, split, group, top, distinct, cache	Emit machine-readable output on stdout.
-V, --version	global	Print the version.
-h, --help	global	Print command help.

Field Options

sort, group, top, and distinct can parse a key column:

Option	Notes
-k, --key <COL[S]>	1-based key column. sort accepts columns in priority order, for example 3,1,2; other commands accept one column. Omit to use the whole line.
-t, --delim <C>	Field delimiter. Default: comma. Use \\t or tab for TSV.
--csv	Use RFC 4180 CSV parsing, including quoted fields.
--quote <C>	CSV quote character. Default: ".
--numeric	Treat keys as numbers for sort and top.

Sort and Group Options

Option	Notes
-r, --reverse	Reverse the sort order (sort).
--budget <SIZE>	In-memory budget before spilling to disk for sort / group. Default: 256MiB. Accepts sizes like 512MiB or 2GiB.
--spill-dir <DIR>	Directory for external-merge spill files (sort / group).

Transform Options

Option	Notes
--out <FILE>	Output file for sort, replace, case, and grep-lines. Required for replace, case, and grep-lines.
-i, --ignore-case	Case-insensitive replace / grep-lines.
-e, --regex	Regex replace / grep-lines pattern.
-w, --whole-word	Whole-word grep-lines matches.
--overwrite	Let grep-lines --out replace an existing file.
--jobs <N>	Parallel workers for replace, case, and grep-lines. 0 uses the Rayon default.
--chunk-lines <N>	Lines per parallel chunk. Default: 4000000.

Output commands refuse to overwrite existing files (for grep-lines, --overwrite opts in). Choose a new output path or remove the target intentionally before rerunning.

Gen Options

Option	Meaning
--lines <N>	Lines to generate. Required.
--cols <N>	Columns per generated line. Default: 5.
--encoding <ENC>	Encoding to write. Default: UTF-8.
-q, --quiet	Do not print progress or the final summary.

Split Options

Option	Notes
--lines <N>	Lines per output part. Required and must be at least 1.
--out-dir <DIR>	Output directory. Default: the source file's directory.
--name <NAME>	Base file name for parts. Default: the input file name.
--json	Print the split result (part files and counts) as JSON.

Default split files use <stem>.partNNNN<.ext> names.

Search Options

Option	Notes
-e, --regex	Interpret the pattern as a regular expression.
-i, --ignore-case	Case-insensitive matching.
-w, --whole-word	Match whole words only.
--max <N>	Limit printed matches.
--start-byte <N>	Begin at a byte offset for worker/API resume.

Serve Options

ayame serve binds to 127.0.0.1:8777 by default.

Option	Notes
--host <ADDR>	Bind address. Default: 127.0.0.1.
--port <N>	Port. Default: 8777.
--allow-remote	Required for non-loopback hosts. This exposes unauthenticated file access to the network.

Group, Top, Distinct

Command	Options
group	--value <COL> enables numeric sum, min, max, and avg; --out-groups <FILE> writes TSV rows; --json prints the run summary (groups, runs, spill_bytes).
top	-n <N> sets the count; --min returns the smallest keys; --out-order <FILE> writes row order as little-endian u64; --json prints the selected rows.
distinct	Uses the selected key column and reports an approximate distinct count; --json prints the estimate and HyperLogLog stats.

Cache Commands

Command	Notes
cache path	Print the cache directory to stdout.
cache info	Show cache size and entry summary.
cache gc	Remove old cache entries. Supports --max-size, --max-age-days, and --dry-run.
cache clear	Remove cache entries.

cache path prints the directory to stdout (it is the one pipeable datum); info, gc, and clear write their human-readable report to stderr so stdout stays free for piping. Add --json to any subcommand for the structured form on stdout.

Update and Remove

Command	Options
update	--version <VERSION> selects a release tag (latest by default); --install-dir <DIR> installs there instead of replacing the current install; --force allows installing an equal or older release; --dry-run resolves the release without changing files.
remove	--install-dir <DIR> removes that install target instead of the current install; --yes skips the confirmation prompt; --dry-run prints the target without changing files.

update verifies the release .sha256 file before installing. On macOS it updates Ayame.app when running from an app bundle; otherwise it can replace a standalone binary. On Windows, replacing or removing the running executable is completed by a helper after the current process exits. Binaries running from /nix/store are treated as Nix-managed and are not modified; update or remove them through Nix, or pass --install-dir to install a standalone release elsewhere.

Exit Codes

Ayame follows the grep convention:

Code	Meaning
0	Success. For search, at least one match was found.
1	search ran cleanly but found no matches.
2	A usage error, or a failure during the run.

search --json always exits 0 — machine callers read match status from the hits array rather than the exit code.

Examples

ayame stat huge.csv
ayame head huge.log -n 20
ayame tail huge.log -n 200
ayame line huge.log 500000
ayame lines huge.log 500000 50
ayame search huge.log 'ERROR' -i --max 50
ayame sort huge.csv -k 1 --csv --out sorted.csv
ayame replace huge.log ERROR WARN --out fixed.log --jobs 0
ayame case huge.csv lower --out lower.csv
ayame grep-lines huge.log 'ERROR' -i --out errors.log
ayame split huge.csv --lines 1000000
ayame group huge.csv -k 3 --value 5
ayame top huge.csv -k 2 -n 100 --numeric
ayame distinct huge.csv -k 4
ayame gen sample.csv --lines 100000
ayame cache info
ayame update --dry-run
ayame serve huge.csv --port 8777