CLI Reference

The swarm-icons binary manages Iconify icon sets from the terminal. Browse the catalog, download JSON files, search and export icons, and generate manifests, all without Node.js.

When to use the CLI

The CLI is a development-time companion to the go-swarm-icons library. It handles three workflows:

Building a local icon library: Browse the full Iconify catalog with json browse, download the sets a project needs with json download, and keep them current with json update. The downloaded JSON files feed JsonCollectionProvider at runtime.
Exploring and exporting icons: Search sets by keyword with icon search, list everything in a prefix with icon list, and export individual SVGs with icon export for use with DirectoryProvider or as standalone assets.
Project setup and tooling: Scaffold a starter configuration with init, pre-warm the Iconify API cache for offline builds with cache warm, and generate icon name manifests for build pipelines with manifest generate.

Installation

The CLI is a separate Go module. It is not required by any library import.

go install github.com/frostybee/go-swarm-icons/cmd/swarm-icons@latest

Verify the installation:

swarm-icons --help

Commands

Command	Description
`init`	Generate a starter Go configuration file

`json download`	Download Iconify JSON sets from the npm registry
`json update`	Check for and apply updates to downloaded sets
`json browse`	Browse all available Iconify icon sets

`icon export`	Export icons as individual SVG files
`icon list`	List available icons from a directory, JSON set, or the API
`icon search`	Search for icons by name within an icon set

`cache warm`	Pre-fetch icons from the Iconify API and cache them on disk
`cache clear`	Clear the icon cache directory

`manifest generate`	Generate a JSON manifest of icon names from a directory

JSON Commands

Documents flags for browsing, downloading, and updating Iconify sets from the npm registry.

Icon Commands

Documents flags for the export, list, and search subcommands and their source modes.

Cache Commands

Covers flags for pre-fetching icons to disk and wiping the cache directory.

Init & Manifest

Covers flags for scaffolding a config file and indexing a directory's icon names.