Installation

poly is Poly's command-line tool: your files, searchable and scriptable from the terminal. It ships inside the desktop app—there's no separate download.

Install

1. Install the Poly desktop app if you haven't already.
2. In the app, choose Install CLI Tools from the app menu.
3. Open a new terminal and verify:

poly app status

What the install step does per platform:

• macOS / Linux — creates a symlink at ~/.local/bin/poly pointing at the binary inside the app. If ~/.local/bin isn't on your PATH yet, the app shows you the one line to add to your shell profile.
• Windows — copies the binary to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Poly\bin and adds that directory to your user PATH. Open a new terminal to pick it up.

Because the CLI lives inside the app bundle, it updates automatically whenever the desktop app updates — the symlink always points at the current version.

Sign in

The CLI uses the desktop app's session. If you're already signed into the app, poly just works. Otherwise:

poly auth login

This opens a browser window to sign you in — the CLI itself never stores your credentials. See auth for details.

The app must be running

The CLI talks to the desktop app, which manages the local cache and the connection to Poly's servers. If the app isn't running, any command will tell you — and starting it from the terminal is one command:

poly app start

This launches the app hidden, in background mode, without stealing focus. More on this relationship in How it Works.

First commands

# List the roots you have access to
poly ls //

# List your home drive
poly ls //Home

# Search your files by meaning
poly search "the contract with the March deadline"

# Show everything Poly knows about a file
poly file show //Home/docs/report.pdf

From here, the command reference covers every command in detail.