LiveKit CLI

Overview

The LiveKit CLI (lk) is the primary interface for managing LiveKit Cloud projects, creating applications from templates, and deploying agents. For a conceptual overview of the CLI and its key workflows, see the CLI introduction.

Setup

Install the CLI, authenticate with LiveKit Cloud, and link a project to get started.

Install the CLI

brew install livekit-cli

curl -sSL https://get.livekit.io/cli | bash

winget install LiveKit.LiveKitCLI

git clone github.com/livekit/livekit-cli
make install

Update the CLI

Update the CLI regularly to ensure you have the latest features and bug fixes:

brew update && brew upgrade livekit-cli

curl -sSL https://get.livekit.io/cli | bash

winget upgrade LiveKit.LiveKitCLI

make install

Add a project

Link a LiveKit project to the CLI to use it. This can be a LiveKit Cloud project or a self-hosted LiveKit server instance.

To link a LiveKit Cloud project, run the following command then follow the instructions in your browser to authenticate:

lk cloud auth

To add a different project, see the Project management guide.

Generate access token

A participant creating or joining a LiveKit room needs an access token. You can generate one using the CLI:

lk token create \
  --api-key devkey --api-secret secret \
  --join --room test_room --identity test_user \
  --valid-for 24h

lk token create \
  --api-key <PROJECT_KEY> --api-secret <PROJECT_SECRET> \
  --join --room test_room --identity test_user \
  --valid-for 24h

You can also generate tokens from your project's dashboard.

Test with LiveKit Meet

Use LiveKit Meet to preview your LiveKit instance. Enter the token you previously generated in the "Custom" tab. After you connect, your microphone and camera stream in realtime, and any other participant who connects to the same room can see and hear you.

Simulating another publisher

One way to test a multi-user session is by generating a second token (ensure --identity is unique), opening the LiveKit Meet example app in another browser tab and connecting to the same room.

Another way is to use the CLI as a simulated participant and publish a prerecorded video to the room:

lk room join \
  --url ws://localhost:7880 \
  --api-key devkey --api-secret secret \
  --publish-demo --identity bot_user \
  my_first_room

lk room join \
  --url <PROJECT_SECURE_WEBSOCKET_ADDRESS> \
  --api-key <PROJECT_API_KEY> --api-secret <PROJECT_SECRET_KEY> \
  --publish-demo --identity bot_user \
  my_first_room

This command publishes a looped demo video to my_first_room. Due to how the file was encoded, expect a short delay before your browser has sufficient data to render frames.

App templates

The LiveKit CLI can help you bootstrap applications from a number of convenient template repositories, using your project credentials to set up required environment variables and other configuration automatically.

For agent templates (voice agents and other LiveKit Agents projects), use lk agent init:

lk agent init my-agent --template agent-starter-python
# or: --template agent-starter-node

Then follow the CLI prompts to finish your setup.

Omit the --template flag to see a list of all available templates.

First-party templates: