The Zapier SDK CLI lets you explore and run actions across 8,000+ apps directly from your terminal, authenticated, with no OAuth setup required. It’s the fastest way to understand what an app can do and what inputs an action needs before writing any code.
CLI and SDK, complementary by design
The CLI is built on the SDK and is the fastest way to explore — discover what an app can do, inspect input fields, and run actions interactively. You or an agent can go back and forth with it freely: try an action, check what fields it needs, adjust inputs, repeat. For some agent use cases, the CLI alone may be enough.
When you need something repeatable, embedded, or production-grade — a scheduled workflow, a backend integration, a tool in an AI agent — reach for the TypeScript SDK. Everything you learned with the CLI transfers directly: same app keys, same action keys, same input shapes.
Save the client_secret; it’s only shown once. Use the returned client_id and client_secret wherever the CLI needs authentication instead of the interactive login token.To remove a credential pair when you no longer need it, use the delete-client-credentials command and pass the client_id:
CLI commands work with three concepts: apps, connections, and actions.An app is an integration — Google Sheets, Slack, GitHub. Each app has an app key, a short identifier you use in every command (google-sheets, slack, github).A connection is an authenticated account for an app — your personal Google account, a Slack bot account, a CI GitHub account. Each connection has a connection ID that you pass with every action call to tell the CLI which account to use.An action is something the app can do — create a spreadsheet, add a row, send a message. Each action has input fields: the specific values it needs to run. Some input fields are static; others are dynamic and only appear once you provide context (like which spreadsheet you’re targeting as each may have different columns).
App keys come in two forms. Commands take an app-key as a positional argument, which can be a short slug like google-sheets or a longer key like GoogleSheetsV2CLIAPI.Slugs are easier to type and remember, so use those when you can. When in doubt, search:
[ { "slug": "google-sheets", "key": "GoogleSheetsV2CLIAPI", "title": "Google Sheets", "description": "Create, edit, and share spreadsheets wherever you are with Google Sheets, and get automated insights from your data.", ... }]
Use the slug as the app-key in all subsequent action commands for that specific app.Every action needs a connection ID. A connection ID ties a command to a specific authenticated account, like your Google Sheets connection, Slack account, or GitHub org.List all connections you already have for an app:
Hold onto that id. You’ll use it in every action call.
Other ways to find a connection
find-unique-connection has the same syntax as find-first-connection, but throws an error if more than one connection matches.
Use this when you need to be certain you got the right account, not just the first one.
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npx zapier-sdk find-unique-connection google-sheets --owner me --json
list-connections returns all matching connections as a paginated list.
Useful when you have multiple Google accounts connected and need to pick the right one.
This walkthrough shows the full pattern: connect to an app, discover what it can do, figure out what inputs an action needs, and run it.We’ll create a new Google Sheet with a header row and then add rows to it.
[ { "key": "get_many_rows", "title": "Get Many Spreadsheet Rows (Advanced)", "action_type": "search", "description": "Return up to 1,500 rows as a single JSON value or as line items.", ... }, ..., { "key": "lookup_row", "title": "Lookup Spreadsheet Row", "action_type": "search", "description": "Find a specific spreadsheet row based on a column and value. If found, it returns the entire row.", ... }, ..., { "key": "lookup_row", "title": "Find or Create Row", "action_type": "search_or_write", "description": "Finds or creates a specific lookup row.", ... }, ..., { "key": "add_row", "title": "Create Spreadsheet Row", "action_type": "write", "description": "Create a new row in a specific spreadsheet.", ... }, ..., { "key": "create_spreadsheet", "title": "Create Spreadsheet", "action_type": "write", "description": "Creates a new spreadsheet. Choose from a blank spreadsheet, a copy of an existing one, or one with headers.", ... }, { "key": "create_worksheet", "title": "Create Worksheet", "action_type": "write", "description": "Creates a new worksheet in a Google Sheet.", ... }, ...]
[ { "key": "add_row", "title": "Create Spreadsheet Row", "action_type": "write", "description": "Create a new row in a specific spreadsheet.", ... }, ..., { "key": "create_spreadsheet", "title": "Create Spreadsheet", "action_type": "write", "description": "Creates a new spreadsheet. Choose from a blank spreadsheet, a copy of an existing one, or one with headers.", ... }, { "key": "create_worksheet", "title": "Create Worksheet", "action_type": "write", "description": "Creates a new worksheet in a Google Sheet.", ... }, ...]
Other ways to explore actions
get-action is for when you already know the action key and want its full detail instead of scanning a list:
{ "key": "create_spreadsheet", "title": "Create Spreadsheet", "action_type": "write", "description": "Creates a new spreadsheet. Choose from a blank spreadsheet, a copy of an existing one, or one with headers.", ...}
--page-size is useful when apps like Salesforce or HubSpot have many actions and you want to page through the results
[ { "key": "drive", "title": "Drive", "is_required": false, "description": "Select the Google Drive location for your spreadsheet. Choose between My Drive or a Shared Drive; the former is the default.", ... }, { "key": "title", "title": "Title", "is_required": true, "description": "Enter the name of the new spreadsheet.", ... }, { "key": "spreadsheet_to_copy", "title": "Spreadsheet to Copy", "is_required": false, "description": "Select a spreadsheet to duplicate.", ... }, { "key": "headers", "title": "Headers", "is_required": false, "description": "Enter column headers for your new spreadsheet. These will be ignored if \"Spreadsheet to Copy\" is selected.", ... }]
Other ways to inspect input fields
get-input-fields-schema returns the same information as a JSON Schema object instead of a list. Useful when you’re building an agent tool definition or need machine-readable validation rules:
{ "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-06/schema#", "type": "object", "properties": { "drive": { "type": "string", "zapier:dynamicEnum": true, "title": "Drive", "description": "Select the Google Drive location for your spreadsheet. Choose between My Drive or a Shared Drive; the former is the default." }, "title": { "type": "string", "title": "Title", "description": "Enter the name of the new spreadsheet." }, "spreadsheet_to_copy": { "type": "string", "zapier:dynamicEnum": true, "title": "Spreadsheet to Copy", "description": "Select a spreadsheet to duplicate." }, "headers": { "type": "array", "items": { "type": "string" }, "title": "Headers", "description": "Enter column headers for your new spreadsheet. These will be ignored if \"Spreadsheet to Copy\" is selected." } }, "additionalProperties": false, "required": [ "title" ]}
The headers field populates the first row of the default sheet (Sheet1) in one step — no separate worksheet creation needed.Note the spreadsheet id — that’s your spreadsheetId.The response also includes a worksheetId field (the numeric sheet ID, 0 for the default sheet); you’ll pass both to add_row.
[ { "key": "spreadsheet", "title": "Spreadsheet", "is_required": true, ... }, { "key": "worksheet", "title": "Worksheet", "is_required": true, "description": "Worksheets must have column headers. Learn more about [spreadsheet formatting](https://help.zapier.com/hc/en-us/articles/8496276985101-Work-with-Google-Sheets-in-Zaps).", ... }, ...]
The column fields are dynamic — they don’t exist until the action knows which spreadsheet and worksheet you’re targeting. Pass those IDs to get the full field list, including the per-column keys:
COL$A maps to “Name”, COL$B to “Email”, and COL$C to “Role” — the headers you defined when creating the spreadsheet. These are the keys you’ll use in --inputs below.
Here’s what you just did without writing a single line of auth code:
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WITHOUT the SDK CLI WITH Zapier SDK CLI───────────────────────── ─────────────────────1. Create a Google Cloud project 1. npx zapier-sdk login2. Enable the Sheets API 2. npx zapier-sdk run-action …3. Create a service account4. Generate and download a JSON key file5. Generate a Bearer token from the key6. curl with Authorization header
If a user has a Google account connected to Zapier, find-first-connection gives you authenticated access immediately. This is true for all 8,000+ apps on Zapier.
Zapier’s 8,000+ apps cover the most common operations, but every API has endpoints that go beyond what’s been modeled as actions.For those cases, use curl — it makes authenticated requests to any endpoint directly, with credentials injected automatically from the same connection you’ve been using.
The spreadsheets.get endpoint returns full spreadsheet metadata (sheet names, tab structure, locale, timezone) that isn’t exposed as a built-in Zapier action:
Every command supports --json for raw output, making it easy to pipe into jq or chain into shell scripts. A common pattern: grab a connection ID and use it immediately:
