version: "1.0.3" name: r-btw-cli description: "Use the btw CLI to access R documentation, manage R package development, query CRAN, inspect the R environment, and discover or fetch skills from the command line. Use when you need to: (1) read R help pages or vignettes, (2) run R CMD check, tests, or devtools::document(), (3) search CRAN for packages, (4) check installed package versions or R platform info, (5) list or fetch skills from R packages or GitHub repositories, (6) inspect the source code of installed packages."

btw CLI

btw is a command-line interface for accessing R documentation, package development, CRAN search, and R environment info.

When to use which command

• Use btw check-installed to quickly verify whether a package is installed.
• Use btw docs to read documentation for a locally-installed package.
• Use btw cran only to search for packages or retrieve basic CRAN metadata (version, description, dependencies); do not use it as a substitute for btw docs when the package is available locally.

Commands

Use btw docs to read R help pages, vignettes, and package NEWS for locally installed packages.

btw docs topics <pkg> [--only help|vignettes] [--json]  List help topics and vignettes for a package
btw docs help <topic> [-p <pkg>]                        Read an R help page
btw docs help <pkg>::<topic>                            Read a specific help page (scoped)
btw docs vignette <pkg> [-n <name>]                     Read a vignette (--list to list available)
btw docs news <pkg> [version] [-s <term>]               Read package NEWS/changelog

Use btw pkg to run development tasks on an R package under active development.

btw pkg document [--path <dir>]            Generate roxygen2 docs
btw pkg check [--path <dir>]               Run R CMD check
btw pkg test [-f <filter>] [--path <dir>]  Run testthat tests
btw pkg load [--path <dir>]                Load package with pkgload
btw pkg coverage [--file <f>] [--json]     Compute test coverage

Use btw pkg src to inspect the R namespace implementations of installed packages (or the dev package via .), e.g. to understand behavior the docs don't cover. It returns exact source when available and deparsed functions otherwise. This is not a complete package source checkout: native source, tests, comments, and original file layout are generally unavailable.

btw pkg src list <pkg> [-a|--all] [--json]      List namespace objects and their types
btw pkg src get <pkg> <objects>... [--json]     Show source for objects (srcref or deparse)
btw pkg src methods <pkg> <generics>... [--source] [--json]  List or show S3/S4 methods
btw pkg src path <pkg>... [--json]              Install paths and whether R source is present
btw pkg src search <pkg> <terms>... [--json]    Code-search the package source

When get on a generic shows only a UseMethod/standardGeneric stub, use methods --source to discover and inspect its S3 and S4 implementations directly — e.g. btw pkg src methods dplyr mutate --source. Without --source, methods only lists the available implementations.

Use these commands to inspect the current R installation and installed packages. Use btw check-installed to verify whether a specific package is installed before deciding whether to use btw docs or btw cran.

btw system-info [--json]                             R version, OS, locale
btw check-installed <pkg>... [--fail] [--json]       Check if packages are installed
btw installed-packages <pkg>... [--deps <types>] [--json]  Installed package details

Use btw cran to search CRAN for packages or retrieve basic metadata (version, description, dependencies) for a package. Prefer btw docs over btw cran for reading documentation when the package is installed locally.

btw cran search <query> [-n <count>] [--json]  Search CRAN for packages
btw cran info <pkg> [--json]                   CRAN package details
btw cran versions <pkg> [--after <date>] [--before <date>] [--json]  List CRAN release versions and dates

Use btw skills to discover and fetch skills from R packages or GitHub repositories.

btw skills list <source> [--json]                        List available skills
btw skills get <source> [names...] [--all]               Fetch skill content (list if no names given)
btw skills resource <source> <name> <paths...>           Fetch resource files bundled with a skill
btw skills install <source> [--skill <name>] [--scope]   Install a skill locally

<source> is a package name (e.g. btw) or a GitHub repo spec (e.g. posit-dev/btw).

Run btw --help, btw <group> --help, or btw <group> <cmd> --help for full usage details, including the field names and types returned by --json flags.