Commands

Command	Description
deck up [services...]	Foreground: preflight, start services, tail logs, ctrl+c to stop
deck start [services...]	Detached: preflight, start services, return to shell
deck stop [services...]	Stop services (all if none specified)
deck restart [services...]	Stop + start
deck status [services...]	Show service status (supports --format json and Go templates)
deck logs [services...]	Tail logs with colored prefixes (shows last 20 lines of backlog)
deck run <service> -- <cmd>	Run a one-off command in a service’s environment
deck doctor	Check deps, bootstrap, and config without starting anything
deck init	Create deck.yaml scaffold and update .gitignore
deck --version	Print version

Selective targeting

All lifecycle commands accept optional service names to operate on a subset of the stack:

deck up api           # just the API (+ its dependencies)
deck stop webapp      # stop one service
deck restart api      # restart one without touching others
deck logs api webapp  # tail specific services

When using depends_on, targeting a service auto-starts its transitive dependencies. deck up webapp will also start api if webapp depends on it.

deck stop with service names stops only those services — it does not run post-stop hooks.

deck run

Run a one-off command in a service’s resolved environment (dir, env, env_file, global env):

deck run api -- goose status
deck run api -- go test ./...
deck run webapp -- pnpm test

Useful for migrations, tests, REPL sessions, or any command that needs the same environment as the service.

deck doctor

Walks the full config (deps, bootstrap, hooks, services) and reports status without starting anything:

$ deck doctor
✓ postgres         dep
✗ redis            dep
✓ Install deps     bootstrap (done)
✗ Create database  bootstrap (needed)
✓ api              service
⚠ webapp           service
  ⚠ env_file not found: ./etc/missing.env

Supports --json for machine-readable output.