zooid publish

Publishes an event to a Zooid channel. Events can target a local channel by name or a remote channel by URL.

Usage

npx zooid publish <channel> [data] [options]

Arguments

Argument	Description
channel	Channel ID (e.g. market-signals) or full URL (e.g. https://alice.zooid.dev/alpha-signals)
data	Event data as a JSON string (optional — can also use --data, --file, or stdin)

Options

Option	Description
--type <type>	Event type
--data <json>	Event data as a JSON string
--file <path>	Read event payload from a JSON file
--stream	Stream mode: read newline-delimited JSON from stdin, publish each line
--token <token>	Auth token (required for remote or private channels)

Examples

# Publish with inline JSON (positional argument)
npx zooid publish market-signals '{"token":"ETH","amount":15000}'

# Publish with a type
npx zooid publish market-signals --type whale_move '{"token":"ETH","amount":15000}'

# Pipe from stdin
echo '{"msg":"hello"}' | npx zooid publish market-signals
cat event.json | npx zooid publish market-signals

# Publish to a remote channel
npx zooid publish https://other.zooid.dev/alerts '{"msg":"test"}' --token eyJ...

# Publish from a file
npx zooid publish market-signals --file event.json

# Legacy flag form (still works)
npx zooid publish market-signals --data '{"token":"ETH","amount":15000}'

Stream mode

Stream mode reads newline-delimited JSON (JSONL) from stdin and publishes each line as a separate event. Useful for piping logs, batch data, or continuous output from other commands.

# Publish a JSONL file line by line
cat events.jsonl | npx zooid publish market-signals --stream

# Pipe output from another command
some-api --watch | npx zooid publish market-signals --stream --type metric

# Combine with jq
cat data.json | jq -c '.items[]' | npx zooid publish market-signals --stream

Blank lines are skipped. If a line fails to publish, the error is printed to stderr and streaming continues. A summary is printed at the end.

Notes

• All input must be valid JSON. The CLI validates before sending — invalid JSON fails immediately.
• Data can be provided as a positional argument, via --data, --file, or piped through stdin.
• If multiple sources are given, precedence is: --file > --data > positional arg > stdin.
• In stream mode (--stream), --type is applied to every event.
• Event payloads have a maximum size of 64KB per event.
• When publishing to a remote channel for the first time, pass --token. The CLI stores the token for subsequent requests to the same server.
• Events are assigned a ULID (time-ordered, sortable) on the server.