CLI overview

The Sume CLI is an agent-first wrapper over the current api.sume.com/v1 Developer API. The CLI is intentionally separate from older consumer-product CLI surfaces.

Current status

The shipped CLI (sumelabs/cli) supports account verification, catalog discovery, jobs, and input assets. The CLI also supports Avatar 1.0, Avatar Video 1.0, bundled agent skills, schema discovery, and local diagnostics.

Most of the generation coverage is for Avatar. At this time, the CLI has no first-class subcommands for Image 1.0, Video 1.0, or Music 1.0. For those families, call the Developer API directly (refer to Image, Video, Music).

Local sume mcp is not available in current CLI releases (coming_soon). For remote MCP in Cursor/Claude, use the hosted MCP connector at https://mcp.sume.com/mcp.

Use the hosted installer to install the current native binary:

curl https://cli.sume.com/install -fsS | bash

For Windows PowerShell:

irm https://cli.sume.com/install.ps1 | iex

The installer finds the latest sumelabs/cli GitHub Release. Then it downloads the binary for your platform and compares the binary with checksums.txt. Last, it installs sume in ~/.sume-com/bin.

Then sign in. sume login uses the same Sume sign-in as the hosted MCP: it opens the browser, you select Allow, and the redirect comes back to the CLI on 127.0.0.1. On SSH or a machine with no browser, sign in with a code:

sume login            # browser sign-in
sume login --device   # prints a code; approve it at mcp.sume.com/oauth/device
sume auth status

The sign-in lasts: the CLI keeps a one-hour access token and refreshes it on its own. sume logout revokes it. Scripts can still use an API key instead (SUME_API_KEY, or sume login --api-key <key>). sume auth token prints a current access token for a script that calls the API directly. Refer to Sign-in and API keys.

API base

https://api.sume.com/v1

Common commands

sume login
sume auth status
sume account get
sume balance
sume usage get --limit 20
sume catalog list
sume jobs list
sume jobs status <job_id>
sume jobs result <job_id>
sume avatars create --confirm-paid --avatar-handle studio_presenter --type prompt --prompt "Friendly presenter"
sume avatar-videos create --confirm-paid --avatar-handle sume_clawra --script "Say hello" --quality plus

For stable machine-readable output, use --json. When automation reads output that can contain sensitive URLs or account metadata, use --agent. The estimated length of an avatar-video script must be 4-60 seconds inclusive.

Next pages

1. Install and update
2. Command reference
3. Generation workflows
4. Hosted MCP — remote connector (at this time, we recommend it over local sume mcp)