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Cloptima CLI Getting Started

7 min readUpdated May 2026

Install in Under a Minute

On macOS, install via Homebrew: brew tap cloptima/tap && brew install cloptima-cli. If you prefer containers, use docker.io/cloptimaai/cloptima-cli:latest. The executable command is cloptima in both cases.

Authenticate Securely

For local development, run cloptima auth login to store credentials in your OS keychain. For automation, set CLOPTIMA_ACCESS_TOKEN as an environment variable. This keeps secrets out of shell history and lets pipelines run non-interactively.

Verify Setup

Start with cloptima version, then cloptima accounts list to confirm organization access. Use cloptima status --cloud-account-id <uuid> to check onboarding and ingestion health before running deeper analysis commands.

Run Your First Queries

Use cloptima overview or cloptima costs dashboard for a fast organization-level summary. Then use cloptima costs --start-date YYYY-MM-DD --end-date YYYY-MM-DD for cloud cost explorer, and cloptima k8s costs --cluster-id <uuid> for Kubernetes workloads. Add --output json when you want to feed results into automation or AI workflows.

Find Savings and Risks

Run cloptima recommendations --cloud-account-id <uuid> to inspect optimization opportunities and cloptima anomalies --cloud-account-id <uuid> to investigate unusual spend. These two commands usually surface the fastest first-week wins.

Go Beyond Basic Reporting

Teams typically expand from cost explorer into cost health checks, anomaly investigation, recommendations, Kubernetes analysis, and automation. Common next commands include cloptima anomalies, cloptima recommendations, cloptima k8s costs, cloptima budgets list, and cloptima billing reconciliation-summary.

Next Steps

For team onboarding, share this setup with engineering and FinOps stakeholders. Then move to CI/CD guardrails or local MCP setup so cost checks can run automatically in pipelines and agent workflows.

Put This Guide Into Practice

Cloptima automates the strategies described in this guide.

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