Command Line Interface (CLI)

Stencil's command line interface (CLI) is how developers can build their projects, run tests, and more. Stencil's CLI is included in the compiler, and can be invoked with the stencil command in a project where @stencil/core is installed.

stencil build

Builds a Stencil project. The flags below are the available options for the build command.

Flag	Description	Alias
--ci	Run a build using recommended settings for a Continuous Integration (CI) environment. Defaults the number of workers to 4, allows for extra time if taking screenshots via the tests and modifies the console logs.
--config	Path to the stencil.config.ts file. This flag is not needed in most cases since Stencil will find the config. Additionally, a Stencil config is not required.	-c
--debug	Adds additional runtime code to help debug, and sets the log level for more verbose output.
--dev	Runs a development build.
--docs	Generate all docs based on the component types, properties, methods, events, JSDocs, CSS Custom Properties, etc.
--es5	Creates an ES5 compatible build. By default ES5 builds are not created during development in order to improve build times. However, ES5 builds are always created during production builds. Use this flag to create ES5 builds during development.
--log	Write logs for the stencil build into stencil-build.log. The log file is written in the same location as the config.
--prerender	Prerender the application using the www output target after the build has completed.
--prod	Runs a production build which will optimize each file, improve bundling, remove unused code, minify, etc. A production build is the default, this flag is only used to override the --dev flag.
--max-workers	Max number of workers the compiler should use. Defaults to use the same number of CPUs the Operating System has available.
--next	Opt-in to test the "next" Stencil compiler features.
--no-cache	Disables using the cache.
--no-open	By default the --serve command will open a browser window. Using the --no-open command will not automatically open a browser window.
--port	Port for the Integrated Dev Server. Defaults to 3333.	-p
--serve	Starts the Integrated Dev Server.
--stats	Write stats about the project to stencil-stats.json. The stats file is written in the same location as the config.
--verbose	Logs additional information about each step of the build.
--watch	Watches files during development and triggers a rebuild when files are updated.

stencil docs

Performs a one-time generation of documentation for your project. For more information on documentation generation, please see the Documentation Generation section.

stencil generate

Alias: stencil g

Starts the interactive generator for a new Stencil component. The generator will ask you for a name for your component, and whether any stylesheets or testing files should be generated.

If you wish to skip the interactive generator, a component tag name may be provided on the command line:

stencil generate my-new-component

All components will be generated within the src/components folder. Within src/components, a directory will be created with the same name as the component tag name you provided containing the generated files. For example, if you specify page-home as the component tag name, the files will be generated in src/components/page-home:

src
└── components
    └── page-home
        ├── page-home.css
        ├── page-home.e2e.ts
        ├── page-home.spec.ts
        └── page-home.tsx

It is also possible to specify one or more sub-folders to generate the component in. For example, if you specify pages/page-home as the component tag name, the files will be generated in src/components/pages/page-home:

stencil generate pages/page-home

The command above will result in the following directory structure:

src
└── components
    └── pages
        └── page-home
            ├── page-home.css
            ├── page-home.e2e.ts
            ├── page-home.spec.ts
            └── page-home.tsx

stencil help

Aliases: stencil --help, stencil -h

Prints various tasks that can be run and their associated flags to the terminal.

stencil test

Tests a Stencil project. The flags below are the available options for the test command.

Flag	Description
--spec	Tests .spec.ts files using Jest.
--e2e	Tests .e2e.ts files using Puppeteer and Jest.
--no-build	Skips build process before running the tests. (You are expected to have built it beforehand).
--devtools	Opens the dev tools panel in Chrome for end-to-end tests. Setting this flag will disable --headless
--headless	Sets the headless mode to use in Chrome for end-to-end tests. --headless and --headless=true will enable the "old" headless mode in Chrome, that was used by default prior to Chrome v112. --headless=new will enable the new headless mode introduced in Chrome v112. See this article for more information on Chrome's new headless mode.

stencil version

Alias: stencil -v

Prints the version of Stencil to the terminal.