CLI Reference

The pest CLI (@heilgar/pest-cli) provides project setup and QA tools.

Installation

npm install -D @heilgar/pest-cli

Commands

pest install

Install Claude Code agents and skills for pest into your project.

pest install [--force]

Creates:

• .claude/agents/pest-test-writer.md — agent for writing pest tests (unit + integration patterns, all matchers documented)
• .claude/agents/pest-test-healer.md — agent for debugging failing pest tests
• .claude/skills/pest-test.md — skill for generating pest tests from system prompts

Option	Alias	Description
--force	-f	Overwrite existing files

Example:

# First install
pest install

# Re-install (overwrite existing)
pest install --force

pest qa --mcp <server>

Run smoke tests against an MCP server defined in pest.config.ts. Requires @heilgar/pest-mcp.

pest qa --mcp myServer
pest qa --mcp myServer --verbose

Validates: server startup, tool discovery, schema validity, prompts, resources, clean shutdown.

Option	Alias	Description
--mcp		MCP server name from pest.config.ts (required)
--verbose	-v	Show detailed output

Example output:

pest qa — myServer (npx my-mcp-server)

  [pass] Server started and connected via stdio (1.2s)
  [pass] tools/list: 3 tools (search, create, delete)
  [pass] Tool schemas valid
  [pass] prompts/list: 1 prompt (summarize)
  [pass] resources/list: 0 resources
  [pass] Server closed cleanly

  Result: 6 passed, 0 failed

See MCP Extension for full MCP testing docs.

Running tests

pest does not have its own test runner. Use vitest or jest directly:

# Run all tests
vitest run

# Run specific test file
vitest run tests/my-agent.test.ts

# Watch mode
vitest

The pest vitest/jest reporters handle all output — per-test metrics, token costs, JSON logs, and HTML reports. See Reporters for configuration.