Browse and read in-CLI documentation topics without leaving your terminal. Covers first-deployment walkthroughs, SSL troubleshooting, RLS best practices, and more.
# List all available topics
nself help-topics list
# Read a specific topic
nself help-topics show first-deployment
nself help-topics show ssl-troubleshooting
nself help-topics show rls-best-practicesnself help-topics <SUBCOMMAND> [FLAGS]nself help-topics is a built-in documentation browser. Topics are bundled with the CLI binary and cover common tasks, troubleshooting scenarios, and best-practice guides that are too long to fit inside standard --help output.
Unlike the online documentation at docs.nself.org, help topics work fully offline. They are always in sync with the installed CLI version — no browser, no search engine needed.
Topics are paged through less by default. Set NSELF_PAGER=cat to disable paging and pipe output freely.
Print all available topic slugs with a one-line description of each.
nself help-topics list
# TOPIC DESCRIPTION
# first-deployment Walk through your first nself install and project setup
# ssl-troubleshooting Debug certificate errors and Let's Encrypt failures
# rls-best-practices Row-Level Security patterns for Hasura + Postgres
# plugin-development Write and publish your own nSelf plugin
# multi-tenancy Multi-app isolation vs Cloud multi-tenancy conventions
# upgrade-guide Safe upgrade procedure between nSelf minor versions
# backup-restore Automated backup setup and disaster recovery steps
# monitoring-setup Configure Prometheus, Grafana, and alerting rules
# custom-services Add your own Docker service via the CS_N slot system
# k8s-migration Migrate a running nSelf stack to Kubernetes
nself help-topics list --jsonDisplay the full content of a topic. Output is sent to the pager defined by PAGER or NSELF_PAGER (default: less -R).
nself help-topics show first-deployment
nself help-topics show ssl-troubleshooting
nself help-topics show rls-best-practices --no-pager # print directly| Slug | Description |
|---|---|
first-deployment | Install, initialize, and deploy your first nSelf project end-to-end |
ssl-troubleshooting | Certificate errors, Let's Encrypt rate limits, mkcert local CA |
rls-best-practices | Row-Level Security patterns: per-user, per-tenant, public read |
plugin-development | Write, test, and publish a plugin in Go (or Rust for CPU-heavy work) |
multi-tenancy | source_account_id vs tenant_id — which to use and when |
upgrade-guide | Safe patch and minor upgrade steps, data migrations, rollback |
backup-restore | pg_dump schedule, MinIO snapshots, full restore walkthrough |
monitoring-setup | Enable Prometheus/Grafana, import dashboards, set up Alertmanager |
custom-services | Add a service via CS_N slots without breaking nself build |
k8s-migration | Convert a VPS stack to Kubernetes with nself k8s convert |
| Flag | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
--json | bool | false | Output list as JSON array |
--no-pager | bool | false | Print topic without paging (show) |
--plain | bool | false | Strip ANSI colors from output |
nself help-topics list | grep sslNSELF_PAGER=cat nself help-topics show rls-best-practices --plainfor topic in $(nself help-topics list --json | jq -r '.[].slug'); do
NSELF_PAGER=cat nself help-topics show "$topic" --plain > "$topic.txt"
donenself help-topics show upgrade-guide
# Then apply the upgrade:
nself upgradeNSELF_PAGER — override the pager command (default: less -R). Set to cat to disable paging.PAGER — fallback if NSELF_PAGER is unsetNO_COLOR — set to any value to disable ANSI colors (same as --plain)0 — success1 — topic not found2 — invalid arguments or missing subcommand