zerv CLI commands and global flags - zerv

zerv [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

zerv has four subcommands:

Subcommand	Purpose
`zerv version`	Flexible, configurable version generation with full control
`zerv flow`	Opinionated, automated pre-release management from branches
`zerv check`	Validate version strings against a format
`zerv render`	Convert and re-render existing version strings

Global options

Option	Description
`-v, --verbose`	Debug-level logs to stderr; `RUST_LOG` for fine-grained control
`--config-file <PATH>`	Read this config file instead of discovering `zerv.toml`
`-V, --version`	Print version
`-h, --help`	Print help (long help includes examples)

See the config file page for --config-file semantics, including the null-device escape hatch. -C, --directory <DIR> (run against a different repository) is not a root flag. It is available on the version and flow subcommands.

Examples

# Flow - branch-based versioning from git state
zerv flow

# Flow - use specific schema preset
zerv flow --schema standard

# Basic version generation from git
zerv version

# Generate PEP440 format with custom schema
zerv version --output-format pep440 --schema calver

# Override VCS values for testing
zerv version --tag-version v2.0.0 --distance 5 --dirty

# Force clean release state
zerv version --clean

# Pipe Zerv RON between commands
zerv version --output-format zerv | zerv version --source stdin --schema calver

# Use in different directory
zerv version -C /path/to/repo

# Render - convert SemVer to PEP440
zerv render 1.2.3-alpha.1 --output-format pep440

# Render - use template for custom output
zerv render 1.2.3 --output-template 'v{{major}}.{{minor}}'

# Render - add prefix
zerv render 1.2.3 --output-prefix release-

These examples ship in zerv --help output.

AI-friendly docs

The docs site serves machine-readable endpoints alongside the HTML pages:

Endpoint	Purpose
`https://zerv.wisl.dev/llms.txt`	Docs index for AI agents
`https://zerv.wisl.dev/llms-full.txt`	All pages in one file
`https://zerv.wisl.dev/skill.md`	Agent skill file (`npx skills add https://zerv.wisl.dev`)
`https://zerv.wisl.dev/mcp`	Search MCP server for MCP clients
Any page URL + `.md`	Markdown export, e.g. `/cli/flow.md`

zerv --help advertises these endpoints in its afterword.

Last modified on August 25, 2026