Accessing Built-in Help

The Cardano command line interface cardano-cli provides a collection of tools for key generation, transaction construction, certificate creation and other important tasks.

The interface is organized in a hierarchy of commands and subcommands. Each command and subcommand includes built-in documentation describing command syntax as well as options. If you want more information about cardano-cli commands and options, then the built-in documentation may help you.

To access built-in documentation for the Cardano command line interface:

1. In a terminal window on a computer having cardano-cli installed, type the following command to display top-level help including a list of available commands:

cardano-cli

1. To display built-in documentation for a specific command including a list of available subcommands, type the following where <Command> is the name of the command for which you want to display help:

cardano-cli <Command> --help

1. To display built-in documentation for a specific subcommand including a list of available options, type the following where <Command> and <Subcommand> are the names of the command and subcommand, respectively, for which you want to display help:

cardano-cli <Command> <Subcommand> --help

For example, typing cardano-cli informs you that a node command is available for performing actions related to node operation. To display additional help for the cardano-cli node command, type:

cardano-cli node --help

The command-specific help that displays includes the key-gen-KES subcommand used to generate a KES key pair. A current KES key pair is required to operate your stake pool. To display the available options for the cardano-cli node key-gen-KES command, type:

cardano-cli node key-gen-KES --help

The built-in documentation is available to help you understand commands that you execute when setting up and operating your stake pool.

If you need additional help, the Cardano Forum is available as a resource. The Cardano community welcomes you.