Pipe anything. Get a link.

Get the CLI

Requires Node.js 20 or newer. It is a small download that pulls in nothing else, and there is nothing to configure afterwards.

# Install it globally
npm install -g pastes

# ...or run it without installing
npx pastes --help

Hitting a permissions error? On macOS and Linux a global install writes to a system directory, so it fails unless you prefix it with sudo. You can avoid that entirely: npx pastes installs nothing, and Node version managers such as nvm, fnm, or Volta keep global packages inside your home directory. On Windows the default location is already in your user profile, so no elevation is needed.

Signing in

pastes login shows a short code that you approve in any browser — your laptop, your phone, whatever is nearest. Because the code is displayed rather than typed into a browser on the same machine, this works over SSH on a server with no desktop.

$ pastes login

  Your code:  ABCD-2345
  Approve at: https://pastes.io/cli

  Waiting for approval... Logged in as [email protected]
  Key saved to ~/.config/pastes/config.json

Approving creates an API key and hands it to the terminal that asked for it. The key appears as Pastes CLI in your profile, where you can revoke it at any time. Codes expire after ten minutes and can only be used once.

Only approve a code you started yourself. Anyone holding a code you approve gets an API key that can create, read, and delete pastes on your account.

Read the code before you trust it

pastes is open source under the MIT licence. That matters more here than it might elsewhere: the CLI stores an API key on your machine, and you should not have to take our word for how it handles that. The whole thing is a few hundred lines you can read in one sitting.

pastes-io/pastes-cli

Running without a login

In CI, containers, and cron jobs there is nobody to approve anything. Set PASTES_API_KEY instead and skip the login entirely.

# CI, containers, cron — no login step, no browser
export PASTES_API_KEY=your-api-key
pastes < build.log

The key is read from --api-key first, then PASTES_API_KEY, then the stored config file. The environment variable always wins over a stored key, so a production box can override a stale login without touching disk. Create keys in your profile.

Piping command output

Anything on stdin becomes a paste. With no title given, the first meaningful line of the input is used, which is usually the error you care about.

# Anything on stdin becomes a paste
./deploy.sh 2>&1 | pastes
kubectl logs pod-1 | pastes -t "pod-1 crash" -s logs
docker compose logs --tail 500 | pastes -e 1D
git diff | pastes -s diff

Pasting files

Pass a path and the title comes from the filename, while the syntax is inferred from its extension — .py becomes Python, .log becomes Logs, and so on. Both can be overridden.

# Title and syntax are inferred from the filename
pastes server.py
pastes nginx.log --expire 1D
pastes secrets.env --password hunter2

# ...or set them yourself
pastes dump.txt --title "Prod dump" --syntax sql

Reading and managing pastes

pastes get frosty-mole-8821            # print content to stdout
pastes get frosty-mole-8821 > out.txt  # save it to a file
pastes ls                              # your most recent pastes
pastes ls "crash"                      # search them
pastes rm frosty-mole-8821             # delete one you own
pastes whoami                          # which account is this key on?

pastes ls prints tab-separated slugs and titles, so pastes ls | cut -f1 gives you a plain list of slugs to feed into other commands.

It composes

The paste URL is the only thing written to stdout. Progress messages, warnings, and errors all go to stderr, so you can capture the URL without parsing anything out of it.

# Only the URL goes to stdout, so it composes
url=$(pastes < error.log)
curl -X POST "$SLACK_WEBHOOK" -d "{\"text\":\"Build failed: $url\"}"

# Everything else goes to stderr, so this stays clean
pastes < error.log 2>/dev/null | pbcopy

When stdout is a terminal the URL is also copied to your clipboard. In a pipeline it is not, since you are already consuming the output. Use --no-copy to turn that off entirely.

Commands

Options

Environment variables

Exit codes

Quotas are shared with the HTTP API. Free accounts have per-window and daily creation limits plus a daily cap on reads and searches; Pro raises the creation limits and removes the read cap. See limits and quotas or pricing.

Use it as a library

The same package exports a typed client, so a Node script can create pastes without shelling out.

import { PastesClient } from 'pastes';

const client = new PastesClient({
  apiUrl: 'https://pastes.io',
  apiKey: process.env.PASTES_API_KEY
});

const { success } = await client.createPaste({
  title: 'Build log',
  content: log,
  syntax: 'logs'
});
console.log(success.paste_url);

The CLI is open source and MIT licensed — view it on npm or read the source on GitHub. Prefer plain HTTP? See the API documentation.