Core Concepts

Core Concepts

Snipdeck has a small, deliberate vocabulary. Understanding these five terms is enough to use everything else.

CLI

A CLI is the top-level organising entity — the command-line tool a group of Snips belongs to (for example pl-app, mpt-app, git). This is Snipdeck's defining idea: every Snip belongs to exactly one CLI, so your library stays grouped by tool rather than as one flat list.

A CLI has a name, an optional description (shown on its Home card), an icon, optional execution settings (which shell to run in, an executable path, a working directory) and optional shared parameters. See Managing CLIs.

Snip

A Snip is a single parameterised command that belongs to one CLI. It has:

• a title,
• a command template — text with {token} placeholders, e.g. pl-app deploy --env {env},
• an optional description written in Markdown,
• a set of parameters that map to the tokens,
• tags, a favourite flag, and usage tracking (count + last used).

You copy a Snip's resolved command to the clipboard, or run it. See Creating and Editing Snips, Copying Commands and Running Commands.

Parameter

A parameter fills a {token} in the template. Each parameter has a name, a type, and an optional default:

• Text — a free-form text box.
• Choice — a dropdown constrained to a list of options.

Parameters can live on the Snip itself, or be shared across a whole CLI or globally, with a clear precedence order. See Parameters and Shared Parameters.

Token names are matched case-sensitively: {Env} and {env} are different tokens.

Tag

A tag is a label on a Snip used to filter the Snip list. Filtering is one tag at a time via the left pane, scoped to the currently selected CLI (or all CLIs on Home). Tags can be given icons. See Tags and Tag Icons.

Favourite

A favourite is a Snip you've starred. Favourites surface in their own category on the Home launcher and sort to the top of lists. Toggle the star on any Snip card.

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How it fits together

graph TD
    CLI["CLI (e.g. pl-app)"] -->|owns| Snip1["Snip: Deploy"]
    CLI -->|owns| Snip2["Snip: Logs"]
    CLI -. "shared parameters" .-> Snip1
    CLI -. "shared parameters" .-> Snip2
    Snip1 -->|has| P1["Parameter: env (Choice)"]
    Snip1 -->|tagged| T1["Tag: ops"]
    Snip1 -->|"Copy / Run"| Out["Resolved command"]

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• A CLI owns many Snips and can define shared parameters they inherit.
• A Snip carries its own parameters and tags, and resolves to a final command you copy or run.

Where it's stored

Definitions (CLIs, Snips, parameters, tags) live in a single human-readable JSON document; run history lives in a separate database. Full detail in Data Storage and Backups.