> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.the-meridian.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

The Meridian CLI gives every developer on your team a managed remote MySQL developer database, with no local database to install. `meridian dev` provisions the database, opens a secure tunnel to it, writes `DATABASE_URL` into your `.env`, and runs your dev server, so Prisma and anything else that reads `DATABASE_URL` talks to `127.0.0.1` as if the database were local.

```bash theme={null}
npm install -g @the-meridian/cli

meridian login          # once per machine
meridian link           # once per project
meridian dev            # every day
```

You need Node.js 20 or newer and a Meridian account with access to an app. You do **not** need Docker, a local MySQL server, `gcloud`, or the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy. The CLI downloads and manages the proxy itself, cached and checksum-verified.

## The commands

| Command | What it does |
| - | - |
| [`login`](/cli-auth), `logout`, `whoami` | Connect this machine to your account |
| [`link`](/cli-auth#linking-a-project), `unlink` | Bind this project to an organization and app |
| [`dev`](/cli-dev) | Run the proxy and your dev server together |
| [`db reset`](/cli-database), `db seed`, `db shell` | Work on the developer database |
| [`migrate`](/cli-migrations) | Migrate with a snapshot taken first |

Every command also accepts the [global flags](/cli-reference) (`--json`, `--yes`, `--cwd` and the rest) before or after the command name.

<Note>
  Developer databases are separate from your hosted environments' [databases](/database), and a developer database is never shared with a teammate, not even for an organization owner. The number of developer databases is a plan meter, visible with your other allowances in [Billing](/billing). It is counted per developer, so every collaborator on an app can provision their own.
</Note>


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