CLI command surface

# Daily-driver verbs (5 direct commands)
tether chat             # natural-language interface to every command below
tether go               # one-command deploy: probe → resolve → pull → serve
tether serve            # explicit-config server (full flag surface)
tether doctor           # diagnose env + GPU + per-deploy issues
tether eval             # LIBERO benchmark on Modal

# Sub-app groups (9 visible)
tether models    {list, pull, info}              # curated VLA registry
tether train     {finetune, distill}             # training operations
tether validate  {dataset, export}               # pre-flight checks
tether inspect   {traces}                        # forensic queries on recorded traces
tether traces    {query, summary}                # query and aggregate trace storage
tether pro       {activate, status, deactivate}  # Pro license management
tether contribute                                # opt into Tether Curate data contribution
tether curate                                    # quality / uncertainty scoring for collected data
tether data                                      # raw episode storage operations

Total visible top-level surface: 14 verbs (5 direct commands + 9 sub-app groups). The CLI was intentionally cut from 18 → 14 in v0.9.5 (2026-05-07) to make tether --help learnable. Commands moved to hidden=True are still callable directly for power-user scripts — see the “Power-user (hidden but callable)” section below.

Power-user (hidden but callable)

These verbs still work as documented but are removed from --help:

Verb	Why hidden	Still useful for
`tether export <hf_id>`	Composed by `tether go`	Power-users who want manual ONNX export without auto-serve
`tether bench <export>`	Internal latency microbench	Tether maintainers reproducing perf numbers
`tether replay <trace>`	Niche; superseded by `tether traces query`	Forensics on a single recorded trace
`tether inspect bench`	Duplicate of `tether bench`	Discoverability via `inspect` namespace
`tether inspect replay`	Duplicate of `tether replay`	Same
`tether inspect targets`	Used once during install	Listing hardware target profiles
`tether inspect guard --urdf <path>`	Niche diagnostic	Generating `safety_config.json` from URDF
`tether inspect doctor`	Duplicate of top-level `tether doctor`	Same
`tether calibrate so100 {corners,surface,tap}`	SO-ARM 100 specific (~3 customers)	SO-ARM 100 calibration
`tether bench-game`	SO-ARM 100 hardware bench rigs	SO-ARM 100 customers
`tether config {show,set}`	Stub — config knobs scoped for Phase 2	n/a today
`tether status`	`ps aux \| grep tether` does the same	Lazy listing of running serves
`tether ros2-serve <export>`	First-class `--transport ros2` lands in v1.0	Existing ROS2 customers — see Roadmap
`tether turbo`, `tether split`, `tether adapt`, `tether check`, `tether validate-legacy`, `tether validate-dataset`	Legacy or internal-only	n/a

Top-level flags (apply to every subcommand)

Flag	Purpose
`--version`	Print version + exit
`--help`	Show help for any subcommand
`--verbose` / `-v`	Increase log level (repeatable: `-vv`, `-vvv`)
`--quiet` / `-q`	Errors only
`--output-json`	Emit machine-readable JSON instead of human output (where applicable)
`--no-color`	Disable ANSI color codes

tether go

One-command deploy. See Deploy a model in one command.

tether go --model <hf_id> [--embodiment <name>] [--device-class <target>]

tether serve

Full-flag-surface server. See serve — runtime + safety for the wedge composition.

tether serve <export_dir> [--port 8000] [--host 0.0.0.0]
              [--embodiment <name>] [--safety-config <path>]
              [--cuda-graphs] [--auto-calibrate]
              [--slo p99=150ms] [--slo-mode {log_only,503,degrade}]
              [--robot-id <id>]
              [--policy-a <path> --policy-b <path> --split <int> --no-rtc]
              [--a2c2-checkpoint <path>]
              [--mcp --mcp-transport {stdio,http} --mcp-port 8001]
              [--otel-endpoint <url> --otel-sample 1.0]
              [--record <dir> --record-images {full,hash_only,none}]
              [--max-batch-cost-ms 100] [--batch-timeout-ms 5]
              [--max-consecutive-crashes 5]
              [--cloud-fallback <url>]
              [--inject-latency-ms 0]
              [--adaptive-steps]
              [--deadline-ms <int>]
              [--action-similarity-threshold <L2>] [--max-similar-skips <N>]

tether doctor

tether doctor [--model <export_dir>] [--format {text,json}] [--show-calibration]

10 registered deploy-diagnostic checks plus inline system-probe rows (Blackwell ORT version, JetPack version, cuDNN-vs-driver skew, ORT-TRT EP empirical session test, multi-GPU mixed-architecture warning). See tether doctor.

tether models

Subcommand	Purpose
`tether models list`	Browse the curated registry (pi0, pi05, smolvla, gr00t-n1.6, openvla-7b)
`tether models info <id>`	Show benchmarks + supported targets for a specific model
`tether models pull <id>`	Download weights from HuggingFace

ONNX export is composed inside tether go (recommended), or available as tether export <hf_id> (hidden top-level — see the power-user table above).

tether train

Subcommand	Purpose
`tether train finetune <export_dir> --data <path>`	LoRA fine-tune on customer data
`tether train distill <teacher_export> --output <student_dir>`	SnapFlow 1-step distillation

tether validate

Subcommand	Purpose
`tether validate dataset <path> [--strict] [--embodiment <name>]`	8 falsifiable checks against a LeRobot v3.0 corpus
`tether validate export <export_dir> [--reference <hf_id>] [--threshold 1e-4]`	ONNX vs PyTorch parity

See Pre-flight validation.

tether inspect

Forensic queries on recorded traces. Other diagnostics that were registered here in earlier releases are now hidden — see the power-user table above.

Subcommand	Purpose
`tether inspect traces <export>`	Query recorded /act traces (alias for `tether traces query`)

tether traces

Subcommand	Purpose
`tether traces query [--latency-gt <ms>] [--exit-code <int>] [--limit <N>]`	Filter recorded /act traces by predicate
`tether traces summary`	Aggregate p50/p95/p99 latency + exit-code distribution across all traces

tether pro

Subcommand	Purpose
`tether pro activate <activation_code>`	Redeem a one-time activation code, store license at `~/.tether/pro.license` (the legacy `~/.reflex/pro.license` path is still read for back-compat)
`tether pro status`	Show current license tier, expiry, last heartbeat
`tether pro deactivate`	Remove the on-disk license

tether eval

LIBERO benchmark with cost transparency. See tether eval.

tether eval <export_dir> [--suite libero] [--num-episodes 3] [--video] [--cost-preview]

Output conventions

Exit code 0 = success
Exit code 1 = command-specific failure (e.g. validation failed, doctor reported a fail check)
Exit code 2 = setup error (missing arg, bad config)
Exit code 3 = subcommand-specific failure (e.g. replay --fail-on triggered)
Exit code 5 = adapter error (e.g. eval runner couldn’t classify all episodes)
Exit code 6 = external dependency missing (e.g. modal CLI not on PATH)