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Get started with Tiger CLI

Install Tiger CLI and manage the resources in your Tiger Cloud project from the command line

Tiger CLI is a command-line interface for managing Tiger Cloud programmatically. It lets you, your scripts, and AI agents provision, configure, and manage Tiger Cloud services. Tiger CLI calls Tiger REST API under the hood and bundles Tiger MCP for AI agents. For how these compare and where each fits, see Tiger CLI and Tiger MCP.

Tiger CLI is a command-line interface that you use to manage Tiger Cloud resources including VPCs, services, read replicas, and related infrastructure. Tiger CLI calls Tiger REST API to communicate with Tiger Cloud.

This page shows you how to install and set up secure authentication for Tiger CLI, then create your first service.

Prerequisites for this tutorial

To follow these steps, you'll need:

Install and configure Tiger CLI

  1. Install Tiger CLI

    Use the terminal to install the CLI:

    Terminal window
    brew install --cask timescale/tap/tiger-cli
  2. Set up API credentials

    1. Log Tiger CLI into your Tiger Cloud account:

      Terminal window
      tiger auth login

      Tiger CLI opens Console in your browser. Log in, then click Authorize. You can have a maximum of 10 active client credentials. If you get an error, open credentials and delete an unused credential.

    2. Select a Tiger Cloud project:

      Auth URL is: https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=lotsOfURLstuff
      Opening browser for authentication...
      Select a project:
      

      > 1. Tiger Project (tgrproject)
      2. YourCompany (Company wide project) (cpnproject)
      3. YourCompany Department (dptproject)
      

      Use ↑/↓ arrows or number keys to navigate, enter to select, q to quit

      If only one project is associated with your account, this step is not shown. Where possible, Tiger CLI stores your authentication information in the system keychain/credential manager. If that fails, the credentials are stored in ~/.config/tiger/credentials with restricted file permissions (600). By default, Tiger CLI stores your configuration in ~/.config/tiger/config.yaml.

  3. Test your authenticated connection to Tiger Cloud by listing services
    Terminal window
    tiger service list

    This call returns something like:

    • No services:

      🏜️  No services found! Your project is looking a bit empty.
      🚀 Ready to get started? Create your first service with: tiger service create

    • One or more services:

      ┌────────────┬─────────────────────┬────────┬─────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────────┐
      │ SERVICE ID │        NAME         │ STATUS │    TYPE     │    REGION    │     CREATED      │
      ├────────────┼─────────────────────┼────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────────┤
      │ tgrservice │ tiger-agent-service │ READY  │ TIMESCALEDB │ eu-central-1 │ 2025-09-25 16:09 │
      └────────────┴─────────────────────┴────────┴─────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────┘

Create your first Tiger Cloud service

Create a new Tiger Cloud service using Tiger CLI:

  1. Submit a service creation request

    By default, Tiger CLI creates a service with 0.5 CPU and 2 GB memory with the time-series capability

    Terminal window
    tiger service create

    To control the service configuration, use the service create flags. For example, to create a free service, call tiger service create --memory shared --cpu shared.

    Note

    Free services are currently in beta.

    Free services with shared CPU/memory are only available in the us-east-1 region. Standard services can be created in any available AWS or Azure region using the --region flag.

    Tiger Cloud creates a Development environment for you. That is, no delete protection, high-availability, spooling or read replication. You see something like:

     🚀 Creating service 'db-11111' (auto-generated name)...
     ✅ Service creation request accepted!
     📋 Service ID: tgrservice
     🔐 Password saved to system keyring for automatic authentication
     🎯 Set service 'tgrservice' as default service.
     ⏳ Waiting for service to be ready (wait timeout: 30m0s)...
     🎉 Service is ready and running!
    🔌 Run 'tiger db connect' to connect to your new service
    ┌───────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │     PROPERTY      │                                              VALUE                                               │
    ├───────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │ Service ID        │ tgrservice                                                                                       │
    │ Name              │ db-11111                                                                                         │
    │ Status            │ READY                                                                                            │
    │ Type              │ TIMESCALEDB                                                                                      │
    │ Region            │ us-east-1                                                                                        │
    │ CPU               │ 0.5 cores (500m)                                                                                 │
    │ Memory            │ 2 GB                                                                                             │
    │ Direct Endpoint   │ tgrservice.tgrproject.tsdb.cloud.timescale.com:39004                                             │
    │ Created           │ 2025-10-20 20:33:46 UTC                                                                          │
    │ Connection String │ postgresql://tsdbadmin@tgrservice.tgrproject.tsdb.cloud.timescale.com:0007/tsdb?sslmode=require │
    │ Console URL       │ https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/dashboard/services/tgrservice                                │
    └───────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    This service is set as default by the CLI.

  2. Check the CLI configuration
    Terminal window
    tiger config show

    You see something like:

    api_url:     https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/public/api/v1
    console_url: https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com
    gateway_url: https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/api
    docs_mcp:       true
    docs_mcp_url:   https://mcp.tigerdata.com/docs
    project_id:  tgrproject
    service_id:  tgrservice
    output:      table
    analytics:   true
    password_storage: keyring
    debug:       false
    config_dir:  /Users/<username>/.config/tiger

And that is it, you are ready to use Tiger CLI to manage your services in Tiger Cloud.

For the full list of commands, configuration parameters, and global flags, see the Tiger CLI reference.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”