Overview

Starkite ships as four binaries — kite (all-in-one), kitecmd (base only), kitecloud (base + Kubernetes), kiteai (base + LLM/MCP). Every command on this page works in any edition that includes the modules it touches; edition-specific commands are flagged below.

The examples below use kite for brevity. Substitute kitecmd/kitecloud/kiteai if you've installed a lean edition.

Commands¶

Script execution¶

Available in every edition (base, cloud, ai, all).

Command	Purpose
`kite run`	Execute a starkite script
`kite exec`	Execute inline Starlark code
`kite repl`	Start an interactive Read-Eval-Print-Loop (REPL)
`kite watch`	Watch and re-execute script on file changes
`kite test`	Run test functions in `_test.star` files
`kite validate`	Validate script syntax without executing
`kite init`	Scaffold a new starkite project

Maintenance¶

Available in every edition.

Command	Purpose
`kite version`	Print version information
`kite update`	Update starkite to the latest version
`kite edition`	Manage starkite editions (base, cloud, ai)
`kite module`	Manage external modules (starlark + WASM)

Cloud commands¶

Available in kite (all-in-one) and kitecloud.

Command	Purpose
`kite kube`	Kubernetes artifact generation (`gen-controller-artifacts`, `gen-webhook-artifacts`)

Global Flags¶

Flag	Description	Default
`--var key=value`	Set a script variable
`--var-file path`	Load variables from YAML file
`--output format`	Output format: text, json, yaml, table	`text`
`--debug`	Enable debug logging	`false`
`--dry-run`	Preview commands without executing	`false`
`--timeout seconds`	Script execution timeout	`300`
`--permissions profile`	Permission profile (e.g. `strict`); empty = trust mode	`""`

Environment Variables¶

Variable	Description
`STARKITE_DEBUG`	Set to `1` or `true` to enable debug mode
`STARKITE_OUTPUT`	Default output format
`STARKITE_TIMEOUT`	Default timeout in seconds
`STARKITE_VAR_*`	Variable injection (e.g., `STARKITE_VAR_DB_HOST=localhost` → `var_str("db.host")`)