orchard CLI Reference — Control Apple Apps from the Terminal

Control Reminders, Calendar, Mail, Music, and every other supported app right from your terminal: scriptable, with structured JSON output you can pipe into other tools. Orchard 0.6.2 also adds commands to inspect your setup, check feature and permission status, and toggle integrations without opening the menu bar panel. Installing the global CLI is optional; Skill and MCP integrations can use the binary bundled inside Orchard.app.

Install the CLI

To install manually, symlink it yourself; this requires sudo because /usr/local/bin is owned by root:

sudo ln -sf "/Applications/Orchard.app/Contents/MacOS/orchard-cli" /usr/local/bin/orchard

To remove it, click Uninstall CLI Tool in More Options (also requires an administrator password), or run the manual equivalent:

sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/orchard

Commands at a glance

orchard has 15 top-level commands: 11 app domains, the MCP server, and three setup/diagnostic commands.

Status, feature, and doctor commands

Use status for a quick snapshot without changing or launching anything:

orchard status
orchard status --json

List every integration and its current switch, then enable or disable one by name:

orchard features list
orchard features enable clock
orchard features disable mail

Valid feature names are reminders, calendar, music, weather, notes, mail, maps, messages, contacts, clock, and shortcuts. Enabling a Pro integration does not bypass its subscription requirement.

For connection or setup problems, run:

orchard doctor

doctor is read-only. It checks whether Orchard is reachable, whether /usr/local/bin/orchard points to the app, which local Skills are installed, whether Claude Desktop and Cursor contain an Orchard MCP entry, and whether the running app and CLI versions match. Warnings such as an uninstalled optional Skill do not fail the command; one or more failed checks exit with code 1.

Automatic app launch

In Orchard 0.6.2 and later, app commands and orchard mcp try to launch Orchard.app when it is not already running, wait up to about 10 seconds, and retry once. For scripts that need an immediate failure instead, set ORCHARD_NO_AUTOLAUNCH=1 for that command.

ORCHARD_NO_AUTOLAUNCH=1 orchard calendar info --type calendars

Common options

Most commands that return tool results accept:

• --json: emit structured JSON instead of plain text (see below).
• --help / -h: show usage for that specific command.
• orchard --version: print the installed CLI version.

orchard mcp is a long-running MCP server rather than a one-shot result, and orchard doctor prints a human-readable checklist, so neither uses the normal --json envelope.

JSON output structure

For Apple-app commands, --json prints a single JSON object with up to four keys:

orchard clock time --json

{"output":"Current time in Asia/Shanghai...","success":true}

• success: true/false, mirrors the exit code.
• output: the tool’s result. If the underlying text is (or ends with) a JSON object or array, it’s parsed into real JSON here; otherwise it’s the raw string.
• message (optional): a human-readable prefix that appeared before the JSON payload, when the tool returns both.
• rawOutput (optional): the tool’s unparsed original text, present whenever output was parsed out of it.

A tool that returns a human-readable prefix plus structured data populates all four fields:

{"message":"Found 1 event calendars:","output":{"calendars":[{"id":"abc","title":"Work"}],"count":1},"rawOutput":"Found 1 event calendars:\n{\"calendars\":[{\"id\":\"abc\",\"title\":\"Work\"}],\"count\":1}","success":true}

For scripting, pipe structured commands through jq .output and use message for a status line where you want one.

Exit codes

Getting help

--help works attached directly to the command, or via the orchard help <path> form:

orchard mail read --help
orchard help mail read

Both drill into the exact subcommand and print the same usage text, no matter how deep it’s nested.

Permissions from the CLI

The CLI itself never holds any macOS permission; Orchard.app does, and every command routes through it. The first time a command touches a new capability (Reminders, Calendar, Contacts, Location, and so on), macOS shows its standard permission prompt in the GUI app, not the terminal. Over SSH or another non-interactive session, grant permissions in advance through System Settings > Privacy & Security, since there’s no window to click “Allow” in. See the Permissions Guide for the full list of what each integration needs.

orchard mcp runs Orchard as a local MCP server for as long as the parent process keeps it open; see Connect via MCP for how to configure it.