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Customer Workspace Binaries

Coil customer apps ship their own CLI binary on purpose.

That is not duplication. It is the public lifecycle boundary for the customer app.

Why A Customer Binary Exists​

The platform CLI gives you generic operator workflows. The customer binary gives you the lifecycle for one app.

That split matters because a third-party developer building a store should be able to run:

cd apps/shoppr
cargo run -p shoppr -- validate

without learning the whole monorepo first.

One Binary Or Two?​

There are two binaries:

  • the platform CLI binary, built from the coil-cli crate, exposed here as coil
  • the customer workspace binary, such as shoppr or gitly

They are related, but they are not the same thing.

The customer binary does not shell out to the platform CLI. It builds the customer workspace bootstrap directly in Rust.

What The Customer Binary Owns​

Shoppr’s CLI entrypoint lives in:

  • apps/shoppr/crates/shoppr-bin/src/main.rs

Gitly’s lives in:

  • apps/gitly/crates/gitly-bin/src/main.rs

Those binaries own app-shaped commands such as:

  • describe
  • validate
  • assets publish
  • migrate apply
  • serve
  • up
  • linked-backend or extension diagnostics that only make sense for that app

Real shoppr Example​

Actual help output:

Usage: shoppr [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  describe
  validate
  assets
  migrate
  serve
  up
  linked-backend

That is the public app lifecycle:

  • describe explains the app shape
  • validate checks composition, routes, jobs, and migration contracts
  • serve runs the app
  • up performs app-shaped bootstrap before serving

Real gitly Example​

Gitly adds an app-specific command:

  • extension-checksums

That is exactly why customer binaries exist. Gitly has runtime-installed demo extensions, so the customer CLI exposes a command that makes sense for Gitly and would be noise in the root platform CLI.

When To Use Which Binary​

Use the customer binary when you want:

  • the app’s own developer story
  • app-local validation
  • app-local serve and up flows
  • app-specific diagnostics

Use the platform CLI when you want:

  • generic auth diagnostics
  • generic module operations
  • generic import, TLS, cache, jobs, or release workflows