Make.com has rolled out the Make CLI to all users, a command-line tool that lets developers manage scenarios, connections, data structures, and other workspace resources directly from the terminal. The feature was announced in Make's April 17 release notes and is now broadly available.
This is a meaningful shift in how Make.com positions itself. For years, the platform has been visual-first by design — drag-and-drop, point-and-click, no terminal required. The CLI doesn't replace that, but it adds a developer-oriented surface that opens new workflows for teams managing automations at scale.
What the Make CLI actually does
From the documentation, the CLI exposes management operations for the core Make.com resources: scenarios, connections, data structures, hooks, organizations, teams, and templates. You can list, read, create, update, and delete resources from the command line using your Make.com API token for authentication.
Concretely, this means you can:
- Export a scenario blueprint to a JSON file with one command instead of clicking through the UI
- Import a scenario from a JSON file into a different workspace (useful for staging → production promotions)
- Script bulk operations like "update all connections of type X" without writing custom code against the API
- Integrate scenario management into CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code workflows
Who actually benefits
The CLI is not for everyone. Here's an honest breakdown of who should care:
Solution Partners and agencies managing multiple workspaces. If you build Make.com automations for clients, the CLI is a game-changer for promoting scenarios between workspaces. Previously, this required manual export/import via the UI or custom scripts against the API. Now it's a one-liner.
DevOps and platform engineering teams. If you're integrating Make.com into a broader internal platform with version control, deployment pipelines, and approval workflows, the CLI lets you treat scenarios more like code. Commit blueprints to Git, review changes, deploy systematically.
Power users building dozens of scenarios. If you maintain 50+ scenarios and routinely need to make similar changes across many of them, scripting against the CLI beats clicking through each one.
If you have under 10 scenarios and build them manually as needed, the CLI is overkill. You can safely ignore it.
What this signals strategically
Two things stand out about this release:
Make is courting developers more aggressively. The CLI follows a pattern of recent developer-oriented updates: better webhook tooling, MCP support, the API v2, the Module Migrator. Make.com is no longer satisfied being "just" a visual tool for citizen developers — they want technical teams to take them seriously too.
It's a defensive move against n8n. n8n's biggest selling point with technical buyers is its developer ergonomics — self-hosting, code nodes, Git-based workflow definitions. The Make CLI doesn't close that gap entirely (Make is still SaaS-only and visual-first), but it removes one of n8n's clearest advantages.
How to get started
The CLI is installed via npm (Node.js required). Once installed, you authenticate with your Make.com API token (generate one in your profile settings) and configure your default organization.
The official documentation walks through installation and the full command reference. I'd suggest:
- Install in a sandbox environment first, not production
- Create a dedicated API token with read-only permissions for initial testing
- Practice exporting/importing a non-critical scenario before doing anything destructive
- Add the CLI to a Git-backed workflow for scenario backups (one command per day exports your scenarios as JSON files committed to a private repo)
What I'd watch next
The CLI is foundational infrastructure that opens the door to more sophisticated workflows. Three things to track over the next 3-6 months:
- Whether the CLI will support new resource types as they're added (Make Grid views, AI Agent definitions, custom apps)
- Whether Make will publish official CI/CD integrations (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc.) built on top of the CLI
- Whether agencies start standardizing client onboarding around CLI-based templates rather than manual UI work
For teams building production Make.com workflows, the CLI is worth 30 minutes of exploration this week. If you're an agency or platform team, it's potentially worth several days of investment to build it into your standard delivery process.
Full documentation at help.make.com.