Bittensor CLI

The Bittensor command line interface (btcli) lets you use the Bittensor chain from a terminal: create wallets, stake, register, set weights and send any transaction.

btcli is part of the bittensor Python package. One install gives you both the Python SDK (import bittensor) and the btcli command. The SDK and CLI live in the subtensor repository, alongside the chain code. Both are generated from the chain's metadata, so their commands match the live runtime.

Installation

Requires Python 3.10–3.14.

From pip

This installs the btcli command and the bittensor Python package together.

From source

Using the CLI

btcli --help lists the command groups, and --help works on every command.

• btcli query <name> reads any value from the chain. btcli query --help lists them by topic.
• btcli tx <name> sends any transaction. btcli tx --help lists them by pallet. Every tx command accepts --dry-run, --yes and --proxy-for.
• Workflow groups wrap common tasks: wallet, stake, subnets, weights, axon, proxy, multisig, crowd, lock, timelock and config.
• btcli evm covers EVM keys, funding, precompiles and contracts.

If you leave out a required option, btcli asks for it, shows what it is about to do and waits for you to confirm. Add --dry-run to preview a transaction without sending it.

The short aliases from older versions still work, for example w, st and s.

Configuring the CLI

Set your network and wallet once:

A flag on the command overrides an environment variable, which overrides the config file.

The full CLI reference is at bittensor.com/docs/cli.