lstk

A command-line interface for LocalStack. Built in Go with a modern terminal UI and native CLI experience for managing and interacting with LocalStack deployments. 👾

npm install -g @localstack/lstk

See installation below.

Important

This project is under active development, currently using ZeroVer (0.MINOR.PATCH). Expect breaking changes as we march toward a stable 1.0.0 release.

Prerequisites

• Docker — required as a container engine.
• LocalStack account — required for credentials, the CLI will guide you through authentication.

Installation

1. Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew install localstack/tap/lstk

2. NPM

npm install -g @localstack/lstk

3. Binaries

Pre-built binaries are also available from GitHub Releases. 📦

Quick Start

lstk

Running lstk will automatically handle configuration setup and start LocalStack.

Features

• Start / stop LocalStack emulators with a single command
• Interactive TUI — a Bubble Tea-powered terminal UI when run in an interactive shell
• Plain output for CI/CD and scripting (auto-detected in non-interactive environments or forced with --non-interactive)
• Log streaming — tail emulator logs in real-time with --follow
• Browser-based login — authenticate via browser and store credentials securely in the system keyring
• AWS CLI profile — optionally configure a localstack profile in ~/.aws/ after start
• Self-update — check for and install the latest lstk release with lstk update
• Shell completions — bash, zsh, and fish completions included

Authentication

The CLI supports multiple auth workflows. lstk resolves your auth token in this order:

1. System keyring — a token stored by a previous lstk login
2. LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable
3. Browser login — triggered automatically in interactive mode when neither of the above is present

Note

If a keyring token exists, it takes precedence over LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN. Setting or changing the environment variable will have no effect until the keyring token is removed. Run lstk logout to clear the stored keyring token, after which the env var will be used.

Configuration

lstk uses a TOML config file, created automatically on first run.

lstk uses the first config file found in this order:

1. ./lstk.toml (project-local)
2. $HOME/.config/lstk/config.toml
3. macOS: $HOME/Library/Application Support/lstk/config.toml / Windows: %AppData%\lstk\config.toml

On first run, the config is created at $HOME/.config/lstk/config.toml if $HOME/.config/ already exists, otherwise at the OS default (#3). This means #3 is only reached on macOS when $HOME/.config/ didn't exist at first run.

To see which config file is currently in use:

lstk config path

You can also point lstk at a specific config file for any command:

lstk --config /path/to/lstk.toml start

Default config

[[containers]]
type = "aws"
tag  = "latest"
port = "4566"

Fields:

• type: emulator type; only "aws" is supported for now
• tag: Docker image tag for LocalStack (e.g. "latest", "4.14.0"); useful for pinning a version
• port: port LocalStack listens on (default 4566)
• env: (optional) list of named environment variable groups to inject into the container (see below)

Passing environment variables to the container

Define reusable named env sets and reference them per container:

[[containers]]
type = "aws"
tag  = "4.14.0"
port = "4566"
env  = ["prod", "debug"]

[env.prod]
LOCALSTACK_HOST = "localstack.cloud"

[env.debug]
LS_LOG = "trace"
DEBUG  = "1"

Interactive And Non-Interactive Mode

lstk uses the TUI in an interactive terminal and plain output elsewhere. Use --non-interactive to force plain output even in a TTY:

lstk --non-interactive

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN	Auth token used for non-interactive runs or to skip browser login
LOCALSTACK_DISABLE_EVENTS=1	Disables telemetry event reporting

Usage

# Start the LocalStack emulator (interactive TUI in a terminal)
lstk

# Start non-interactively (e.g. in CI)
LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN=<token> lstk --non-interactive

# Stop the running emulator
lstk stop

# Stream emulator logs
lstk logs --follow

# Log in (opens browser for authentication)
lstk login

# Log out (removes stored credentials)
lstk logout

# Check whether a newer lstk version is available
lstk update --check

# Update lstk to the latest version
lstk update

# Show resolved config file path
lstk config path

# Show version info
lstk version

Reporting bugs

Feedback is welcome! Use the repository issue tracker for bug reports or feature requests.