ermnvldmr.com/services/docs/content/en/apex/reference/cli.md

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CLI reference	The apex launcher: listing, dispatch, help, and exit codes.	31

The launcher is a single stdlib-Python script, commons/apex (on PATH after init.sh). Everything it does targets the local checkout — no node argument exists.

Invocation forms

Command	Behavior
apex or apex --help	List every available action with its summary; exit 0.
apex <group>/<action> [args...]	Dispatch one action.
apex <group>/<action> --help	Print the action's argparse help generated from its METADATA; exit 0.

The listing tags each entry with its overlay source — no tag (commons), (local), (local override) — and appends [DISABLED: reason] where a module declares DISABLED. Listing uses static ast scanning, so no action code executes.

Layout and path resolution

At startup the launcher decides which of two layouts it is in:

• Node checkout — the launcher lives in a directory named commons/ whose parent contains node.env. The parent is the repository root; proprietaries/actions/ is the overlay tree; node identity is resolved before dispatch, and any identity warnings are logged first.
• Standalone commons — any other location. The commons directory is its own root, there is no overlay, and ctx.node is None (log lines carry the global prefix).

sys.path is assembled as: the commons directory (makes engine importable), then commons/vendor/ when present, then ../proprietaries/ in a node checkout (makes proprietary lib/ code importable).

Exit codes

Code	Source
0	Action returned 0 or a non-integer; --help paths.
1	Unknown action; disabled action; unhandled exception (logged as Type: message with the context prefix); non-integer SystemExit.
64	Usage error from argument parsing (EX_USAGE).
65	Data error raised by engine libraries (EX_DATAERR) — for example an empty rendered crontab.
66	Missing input (EX_NOINPUT) — for example missing identity fields or an absent ufw config directory.

Any other code is whatever the action itself returned or raised.

Log format

All engine and action output follows one line shape:

[<node>] [<group>/<action>] [LEVEL] message

LEVEL is INFO, WARN, ERROR, or SUCCESS; ERROR lines go to stderr, everything else to stdout — cron-friendly for both capture and alerting.

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See also:

• Concept: Actions and the overlay
• Reference: Actions
• Reference: Engine API