CLI¶

The zero CLI talks to the Zero Hiring backend on behalf of a signed-in employer user. Agents should prefer the MCP connector when it is available; use the CLI directly for local setup, debugging, and human terminal workflows.

Install¶

Latest release (macOS / Linux):

curl -fsSL https://dev.zerohiring.com/install.sh | sh

To refresh an existing install later:

zero update

Development install from this repository:

pip install -e .

macOS 26+ beta: PyInstaller binary hang¶

The curl installer and build_binary.py ship a PyInstaller onefile binary. On macOS 26 beta (Darwin kernel 25+), that bootloader can hang on every invocation — including a trivial hello onefile build — while pip install works normally.

If zero --version hangs after installing or building the binary, use a venv instead:

python3 -m venv ~/.zerohiring/venv
~/.zerohiring/venv/bin/pip install zerohiring-cli   # or: pip install -e .
mkdir -p ~/.zerohiring/bin
ln -sf ~/.zerohiring/venv/bin/zero ~/.zerohiring/bin/zero
export PATH="$HOME/.zerohiring/bin:$PATH"

CI release builds run on GitHub-hosted macOS runners and smoke-test the built binary before publishing. Rebuild locally with pip install -e ".[build]" so PyInstaller is pinned to 6.21.0.

Authenticate¶

Device-code login (default):

zero login

Verify the active account:

zero whoami

Log out:

zero logout

Headless flow:

zero login --no-wait
# authorize the code in the browser, then:
zero login --complete <SESSION_ID>

Environment-variable credentials (optional alternative to zero login):

export ZEROHIRING_API_URL=https://dev.api.zerohiring.com
export ZEROHIRING_API_KEY=your-backend-api-key

Credentials are stored in ~/.zerohiring/config.json (mode 600).

Global flags¶

Flag	Purpose
`--json`	Machine-readable JSON on stdout
`--envelope`	Wrap `--json` output in `{"schema_version":"1","data":...}`
`--quiet`	Suppress spinners and progress output
`--version` / `-v`	Print CLI version

Command reference¶

Every subcommand, flag, and option is documented in the auto-generated command reference (zero ... --help output).

For agent-oriented examples and hiring workflows, see SKILL.md.