name: pulumi-cli description: "Use for hands-on Pulumi CLI work: running deployments, fixing broken stacks, and managing infrastructure state. Handles: recovering from stuck or interrupted pulumi up with pending operations, cleaning orphaned resources from state after out-of-band cloud deletions, protecting critical resources from accidental pulumi destroy, moving resources between stacks without recreating them, targeting specific resources during deployment, migrating between backends (local file to Pulumi Cloud, S3), stack lifecycle management, state export/import/repair, CI/CD pipeline setup, and importing existing cloud resources. Use this skill — not the language-specific Pulumi skills — whenever the user's question is about operating, troubleshooting, or recovering Pulumi infrastructure rather than writing program code."

Pulumi CLI Skill

Quick Command Reference

Deployment Workflow

# 1. Create new project
pulumi new typescript                    # Interactive
pulumi new aws-typescript --name myapp --stack dev --yes  # Non-interactive

# 2. Preview changes
pulumi preview                           # Interactive preview
pulumi preview --diff                    # Show detailed diff

# 3. Deploy
pulumi up                                # Interactive deployment
pulumi up --yes                          # Non-interactive
pulumi up --skip-preview --yes           # Skip preview step

# 4. View outputs
pulumi stack output
pulumi stack output --json

# 5. Tear down
pulumi destroy --yes

Stack Management

# List stacks
pulumi stack ls

# Create and select stacks
pulumi stack init dev
pulumi stack select prod

# View stack info
pulumi stack
pulumi stack history

# Stack outputs
pulumi stack output
pulumi stack output bucketName --show-secrets

# Remove stack
pulumi stack rm dev --yes

State Operations

# Refresh state from cloud
pulumi refresh --yes

# Export/import state
pulumi stack export --file backup.json
pulumi stack import --file backup.json

# Delete resource from state (keeps cloud resource)
pulumi state delete 'urn:pulumi:dev::myproject::aws:s3/bucket:Bucket::my-bucket'

# Move resource between stacks (preferred over delete+import)
# This is a single atomic operation that transfers state without touching cloud resources
pulumi state move --source dev --dest prod 'urn:...'

# Protect critical resources
pulumi state protect 'urn:...'

Configuration

# Set config values
pulumi config set aws:region us-west-2
pulumi config set dbPassword secret --secret

# Get config
pulumi config get aws:region
pulumi config                            # List all

# Link ESC environment (see language-specific skills for ESC details)
pulumi config env add myorg/myproject-dev

Common Flags

CI/CD Quick Setup

These three environment variables are essential for non-interactive Pulumi in CI/CD — without PULUMI_CI=true, Pulumi may prompt for input and hang your pipeline:

# Required environment variables (all three are important)
export PULUMI_ACCESS_TOKEN=pul-xxx    # Authentication token
export PULUMI_CI=true                  # Disables interactive prompts
export PULUMI_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK=true   # Avoids update check delays

# Typical CI workflow
pulumi login                           # Authenticates via PULUMI_ACCESS_TOKEN
pulumi stack select prod               # Select target stack explicitly
pulumi preview                         # Always preview before deploying
pulumi up --yes                        # --yes for non-interactive confirmation

Importing Existing Resources

# Import single resource
pulumi import aws:s3/bucket:Bucket my-bucket existing-bucket-name

# Bulk import from file
pulumi import --file resources.json

resources.json format:

{
  "resources": [
    {"type": "aws:s3/bucket:Bucket", "name": "my-bucket", "id": "existing-bucket-name"}
  ]
}

State Recovery Patterns

Resource deleted outside Pulumi

pulumi refresh --yes
# Or manually remove from state:
pulumi state delete 'urn:pulumi:dev::myproject::aws:s3/bucket:Bucket::deleted-bucket'

Stuck pending operations

pulumi refresh --clear-pending-creates --yes
# Or:
pulumi cancel --yes
pulumi state repair

State corruption

# Backup current state
pulumi stack export --file current.json

# Try repair
pulumi state repair

# Or restore from history
pulumi stack export --version <previous-version> --file good.json
pulumi stack import --file good.json

URN Format

urn:pulumi:<stack>::<project>::<type>::<name>

Example:
urn:pulumi:dev::myproject::aws:s3/bucket:Bucket::my-bucket

Backend Options

# Pulumi Cloud (default)
pulumi login

# Self-hosted backends
pulumi login s3://my-bucket
pulumi login azblob://my-container
pulumi login gs://my-bucket
pulumi login file://~/.pulumi-state

References

• references/pulumi-cli-commands.md - Complete command documentation
• references/pulumi-state-management.md - State operations and recovery
• references/pulumi-environment-variables.md - CI/CD environment variables