Yba Query CLI

Query YBA with the yba CLI

This skill is for read-only lookups against a live YugabyteDB Anywhere instance via the yba CLI, whose source lives at managed/yba-cli in this repo. It answers questions like "what universes exist on this YBA?", "is there a task running on universe X?", "what's this provider's config?" — not for changing anything.

Guardrail: only ever run list, describe, or get subcommands (and the read-only yba tree / --help). Never run create, edit, delete, pause, resume, restart, upgrade, abort, retry, or similar mutating verbs under this skill — those are a separate, explicit ask that the user must request directly, with its own confirmation.

Step 1: Get the yba binary

Check first: which yba or managed/yba-cli/yba --help. If it's missing, build it from source (no need for the full release pipeline — a plain go build is enough for querying):

cd managed/yba-cli && go build -o yba .

Then invoke it as managed/yba-cli/yba <command> (or add that path to PATH for the session).

Step 2: Point it at the right host + credentials

The CLI needs a host (-H/--host, default http://localhost:9000) and an API token (-a/--apiToken). Resolution order: -H/-a flags > YBA_HOST/YBA_APITOKEN env vars > the config file at $HOME/.yba-cli/.yba-cli.yaml (written by a prior yba auth).

• If the user already has a working config (~/.yba-cli/.yba-cli.yaml exists, or yba universe list succeeds with no extra flags), just use it — don't re-auth.
• Otherwise, ask the user for the host and an API token (generated in the YBA UI under Profile → API Keys). Prefer passing them per-invocation via -H/-a flags or exporting YBA_HOST/YBA_APITOKEN env vars for this session, rather than running yba auth, since yba auth persists into ~/.yba-cli/.yba-cli.yaml and could silently overwrite a config the user already has for a different YBA instance. Only run yba auth -f -H <host> -a <token> if the user explicitly wants the CLI configured persistently.
• Don't use yba login -p <password> for this skill — it takes the password as a plain CLI argument (leaks into shell history / process listing) and also persists to the config file. An API token is the right credential for read-only querying.

Step 3: Run the query

Use -o json when you need to parse or filter the output (e.g. pipe to jq); the default table format is for human eyeballing. pretty gives indented JSON.

For the full command tree and flags, see reference.md in this skill directory, or run yba tree / yba <resource> <subcommand> --help / read managed/yba-cli/docs/yba_<resource>.md directly.

Quick examples:

yba universe list -o json
yba universe describe --name <universe-name> -o json
yba task list --universe-name <universe-name>
yba backup list --universe-names <universe-name> -o json
yba alert list --states active
yba provider list -o json

Notes

• Command and flag names are case-insensitive, but stick to the documented casing shown in --help / reference.md.
• Filters that take lists (--uuids, --states, --universe-names, etc.) are comma-separated strings, not repeated flags.
• Some subcommands take their target as a flag on the parent command rather than on list itself — e.g. yba universe node list -n <universe-name>, yba universe table list -n <universe-name>, yba backup pitr list --universe-name <universe-name>.
• --wait/--timeout only matter for commands that kick off a YBA task; they're irrelevant to pure reads and safe to ignore.
• alert, oidc, and telemetry-provider are preview command groups — they don't exist unless YBA_FF_PREVIEW=true is set in the environment, e.g. YBA_FF_PREVIEW=true yba alert list.