The Supabase CLI is the command-line tool for managing a Supabase project entirely from your own machine, maintained by Supabase Inc. It's tied for the #35 most-used dev tool in developer surveys at roughly 5.4% usage share. Teams reach for it because it spins up a full local copy of Postgres, Auth, and Storage via Docker, then lets you version-control your database schema as migration files and push them safely to production.
A typical workflow: start the local stack, write a migration, then push it to your hosted project.
# create a new migration file with a timestamped name
supabase migration new add_profiles_table
# the CLI generates: supabase/migrations/20260714120000_add_profiles_table.sql
# edit that file, then apply it locally
supabase db reset
# push local migrations to your linked remote project
supabase db pushInstall the CLI, initialize a project folder, then start the local stack (requires Docker Desktop to be running).
# install via npm (or brew install supabase/tap/supabase on macOS)
npm install -g supabase
# initialize config in your repo
supabase init
# spin up Postgres, Auth, Storage, Studio locally
supabase start