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Get started with Tiger CLI

Install Tiger CLI and manage the resources in your Tiger Cloud project from the command line

Tiger CLI is a command-line interface for managing Tiger Cloud programmatically. It lets you, your scripts, and AI agents provision, configure, and manage Tiger Cloud services. Tiger CLI calls Tiger REST API under the hood and bundles Tiger MCP for AI agents. For how these compare and where each fits, see Tiger CLI and Tiger MCP.

This page shows you how to install and set up secure authentication for Tiger CLI, then create your first service. Along the way you manage Tiger Cloud resources such as VPCs, services, and related infrastructure.

Install and configure Tiger CLI

  1. Install Tiger CLI

    Use the terminal to install the CLI:

    Terminal window
    brew install --cask timescale/tap/tiger-cli
  2. Authenticate Tiger CLI

    1. In an interactive terminal, start the login flow:

      Terminal window
      tiger auth login

      Tiger CLI opens Console in your browser to sign in with OAuth. Log in, or sign up if you don't have a Tiger Cloud account yet, then authorize Tiger CLI. If the browser does not open automatically, copy the Auth URL printed in the terminal.

      For non-interactive sessions such as scripts and CI, you can authenticate with client credentials instead of the browser flow.

    2. Select a Tiger Cloud project:

      Auth URL is: https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/oauth/authorize?client_id=...&code_challenge_method=S256&redirect_uri=http://localhost:PORT/callback&response_type=code&state=...
      Opening browser for authentication...
      Select a project:
      

      > 1. Tiger Project (tgrproject)
        2. YourCompany (Company wide project) (cpnproject)
        3. YourCompany Department (dptproject)
      

      Successfully logged in (project: tgrproject)
      

      🎉 Next steps:
      • Install MCP server for your favorite AI coding tool: tiger mcp install
      • List existing services: tiger service list
      • Create a new service: tiger service create
      • Enable read-only mode: tiger config set read_only true

      If only one project is associated with your account, this step is skipped. Tiger CLI stores the OAuth session in your system keychain, or in ~/.config/tiger/credentials with restricted file permissions (600) if the keychain is unavailable, and refreshes it automatically. Tiger CLI stores your configuration in ~/.config/tiger/config.yaml. To sign out and revoke the session, run tiger auth logout.

  3. Test your authenticated connection to Tiger Cloud by listing services
    Terminal window
    tiger service list

    This call returns something like:

    • No services:

      🏜️  No services found! Your project is looking a bit empty.
      🚀 Ready to get started? Create your first service with: tiger service create

    • One or more services:

      ┌────────────┬─────────────────────┬────────┬─────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────────┐
      │ SERVICE ID │        NAME         │ STATUS │    TYPE     │    REGION    │     CREATED      │
      ├────────────┼─────────────────────┼────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────────┤
      │ tgrservice │ tiger-agent-service │ READY  │ TIMESCALEDB │ eu-central-1 │ 2025-09-25 16:09 │
      └────────────┴─────────────────────┴────────┴─────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────┘

Create your first Tiger Cloud service

Create a new Tiger Cloud service using Tiger CLI:

  1. Submit a service creation request

    Run the service creation command:

    Terminal window
    tiger service create

    By default, this creates a service with 0.5 CPU and 2 GB memory. To customize the configuration, use the service create command flags—for example, tiger service create --cpu shared --memory shared for a free service.

    Tiger Cloud services come with several extensions pre-installed, including pgvector, pgvectorscale, and pg_textsearch. To use any of these extensions in your database, you must first create them with SQL:

    CREATE EXTENSION pgvector;
    Note

    Free services are currently in beta.

    Free services with shared CPU/memory are only available in the us-east-1 region. Standard services can be created in any available AWS or Azure region using the --region flag.

    Tiger Cloud creates a Development environment for you. That is, no delete protection, high-availability, spooling or read replication. You see something like:

    🚀 Creating service 'db-11111' (auto-generated name)...
    ✅ Service creation request accepted!
    📋 Service ID: <service-id>
    🔐 Password saved to system keyring for automatic authentication
    🎯 Set service '<service-id>' as default service.
    ⏳ Waiting for service to be ready (wait timeout: 30m0s)...
    🎉 Service is ready and running!
    🔌 Run 'tiger db connect' to connect to your new service
    ┌───────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │      PROPERTY     │                                                 VALUE                                                 │
    ├───────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │ Service ID        │ <service-id>                                                                                          │
    │ Name              │ db-11111                                                                                              │
    │ Status            │ READY                                                                                                 │
    │ Type              │ TIMESCALEDB                                                                                           │
    │ Region            │ us-east-1                                                                                             │
    │ Environment       │ DEV                                                                                                   │
    │ CPU               │ 0.5 cores (500m)                                                                                      │
    │ Memory            │ 2 GB                                                                                                  │
    │ Direct Endpoint   │ <service-id>.<project-id>.tsdb.cloud.timescale.com:<port>                                             │
    │ Created           │ 2026-07-07 13:36:16 UTC                                                                               │
    │ Connection String │ postgresql://tsdbadmin@<service-id>.<project-id>.tsdb.cloud.timescale.com:<port>/tsdb?sslmode=require │
    │ Console URL       │ https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/dashboard/services/<service-id>                                   │
    └───────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

    This service is set as default by the CLI.

  2. Check the CLI configuration
    Terminal window
    tiger config show

    You see something like:

    ┌──────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
    │     PROPERTY     │                             VALUE                             │
    ├──────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
    │ api_url          │ https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/public/api/v1             │
    │ analytics        │ true                                                          │
    │ console_url      │ https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com                           │
    │ debug            │ false                                                         │
    │ docs_mcp         │ true                                                          │
    │ docs_mcp_url     │ https://mcp.tigerdata.com/docs?disabled_skills=ghost-database │
    │ gateway_url      │ https://console.cloud.tigerdata.com/api                       │
    │ mcp_max_rows     │ 100                                                           │
    │ color            │ true                                                          │
    │ output           │ table                                                         │
    │ password_storage │ keyring                                                       │
    │ read_only        │ false                                                         │
    │ releases_url     │ https://cli.tigerdata.com                                     │
    │ service_id       │ <service-id>                                                  │
    │ version_check    │ true                                                          │
    └──────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

And that is it, you are ready to use Tiger CLI to manage your services in Tiger Cloud.

For the full list of commands, configuration parameters, and global flags, see the Tiger CLI reference.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”