Apps

Full reference for managing apps — listing, creating, inspecting, configuring, and controlling their lifecycle.

Apps are the primary compute unit in Skytells — they run your services, APIs, and inference endpoints. The apps command group covers everything from initial creation to lifecycle control.

Subcommands on this page

Command	Description
`skytells apps ls`	List all apps in the linked project
`skytells apps add`	Create a new app
`skytells apps inspect`	Show detailed info about an app
`skytells apps set`	Update a setting on an app
`skytells apps rm`	Delete an app
`skytells apps start`	Start a stopped app
`skytells apps stop`	Stop a running app
`skytells apps restart`	Restart an app
`skytells apps redeploy`	Redeploy without a new build

For deployment and release operations, see deploy. For real-time logs, see logs. For health and status, see status.

skytells apps ls

Lists all apps in the linked project.

Syntax

skytells apps ls [--json]

Example

skytells apps ls

┌────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────┬─────────────────────┐
│ ID         │ Name            │ Status  │ Updated             │
├────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────┼─────────────────────┤
│ app_abc123 │ api-service     │ running │ 2026-03-18 14:23    │
│ app_def456 │ web-frontend    │ running │ 2026-03-17 09:41    │
│ app_ghi789 │ worker-jobs     │ stopped │ 2026-03-15 22:00    │
└────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────┴─────────────────────┘

# JSON output — useful for scripting
skytells apps ls --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.status == "running") | .id'

skytells apps add

Creates a new app in the linked project.

Syntax

skytells apps add <name> [--type <type>] [--json]

Arguments

Argument	Description
`name`	Display name for the app.

Flags

Flag	Description
`--type <type>`	App runtime type.
`--json`	Output the created app as JSON.

Example

skytells apps add api-service --type web
APP_ID=$(skytells apps add worker --type worker --json | jq -r '.id')

skytells apps inspect

Returns detailed configuration and runtime status for a specific app.

Syntax

skytells apps inspect <id> [--json]

Example

skytells apps inspect app_abc123
skytells apps inspect app_abc123 --json | jq '.status'

skytells apps set

Updates a configuration field on an existing app.

Syntax

skytells apps set <id> <field> <value> [--json]

Allowed fields

Field	Description	Example value
`name`	Display name	`"Renamed App"`
`description`	Description	`"Main API service"`

Examples

skytells apps set app_abc123 name "Renamed API"
skytells apps set app_abc123 description "Primary REST API"

skytells apps rm

Permanently deletes an app and all its resources.

Syntax

skytells apps rm <id> [-f] [--json]

Flags

Flag	Description
`-f`	Skip the confirmation prompt.

# Delete with confirmation
skytells apps rm app_abc123

# Delete immediately (CI/CD)
skytells apps rm app_abc123 -f

Deletion is permanent. All deployment history, configuration, and environment variables for the app are removed. This cannot be undone.

Lifecycle commands

These commands control the running state of apps.

`skytells apps start`

Start a stopped app. This resumes the app from its last configuration without triggering a new build.

skytells apps start <id> [--json]

`skytells apps stop`

Stop a running app. Traffic is drained before the process is halted.

skytells apps stop <id> [-f] [--json]

Flag	Description
`-f`	Force stop without waiting for traffic drain.

`skytells apps restart`

Restart a running app — equivalent to stop followed by start. Use this to apply environment variable changes without a new deployment.

skytells apps restart <id> [--json]

`skytells apps redeploy`

Runs the most recent successful deployment again. Useful for recovering from a bad configuration change or manual infrastructure issue, without pushing new code.

skytells apps redeploy <id> [--json]

Common patterns

# Restart all running apps
skytells apps ls --json | \
  jq -r '.[] | select(.status == "running") | .id' | \
  xargs -I{} skytells apps restart {}

# Stop an app, update env vars, restart
skytells apps stop app_abc123
skytells env set APP_MODE=maintenance --app app_abc123
skytells apps start app_abc123

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