Local Development Powered by Caddy
Cove is a command-line tool that simplifies the creation and management of local development websites. It leverages Caddy, MariaDB, and Mailpit to provide a robust environment for both WordPress and plain static sites.
- Simple CLI: Manage everything from your terminal with simple commands.
- Web Dashboard: A handy web interface to view and manage your sites.
- Automatic HTTPS: All sites are automatically served over HTTPS locally using internal certificates.
- WordPress & Static Sites: Quickly create a new WordPress installation or a plain static site.
- Database Management: Includes Adminer for database management and a command for easy backups.
- Email Catching: Built-in Mailpit service catches all outgoing emails for easy inspection.
- Pretty Errors: Uses Whoops for beautiful and informative PHP error pages.
- Custom Rules: Easily add site-specific Caddy directives.
- Web Server: Caddy / FrankenPHP
- Database: MariaDB
- Email Catching: Mailpit
- Error Handling: whoops
- CLI Beautification:
gum - Made for: WordPress and
WP-CLI
Run the following in your terminal to install cove.
bash <(curl -sL https://cove.run/cove-install.sh)Cove provides a simple set of commands to manage your local environment.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
cove add <name> [--plain] |
➕ Creates a new WordPress site (<name>.localhost). Use --plain for a static site. |
cove delete <name> [--force] |
🗑️ Deletes a site's directory and its associated database. |
cove rename <old-name> <new-name> |
🔄 Renames a site, its directory, database, and updates its URL in the database. |
cove list [--totals] |
📝 Lists all sites managed by Cove. Use --totals to show disk usage. |
cove login <site> [<user>] |
🔑 Generates a one-time login link for a WordPress site. |
cove path <name> |
📁 Outputs the full system path to a site's public directory. |
cove url <name> |
🌐 Prints the full https://<name>.localhost URL for a site. |
cove pull [--proxy-uploads] |
🔽 Pulls a remote WordPress site into Cove via SSH. Use --proxy-uploads to proxy media instead of downloading. |
cove push |
🔼 Pushes a local Cove site to a remote WordPress site via SSH. |
cove enable |
✅ Starts the Caddy, MariaDB, and Mailpit background services. |
cove disable |
🛑 Stops all Cove background services. |
cove status |
🔎 Checks the status of all background services. |
cove reload |
🔄 Regenerates the Caddyfile and reloads the Caddy server gracefully. |
cove db <backup|list> |
💾 backup creates a .sql backup for every WordPress site. list shows database credentials. |
cove directive <add|update|delete|list> |
⚙️ Manages custom Caddyfile rules for a specific site. |
cove install |
🛠️ Installs and configures all required dependencies. |
cove upgrade |
⬆️ Upgrades the Cove script and the FrankenPHP binary to the latest versions. |
cove version |
ℹ️ Displays the current version of Cove. |
You can get help for any command by running cove <command> --help.
The web dashboard, available at https://cove.localhost, provides a quick and easy way to:
- View all your managed sites.
- Add new WordPress or Plain sites via a simple form.
- Delete existing sites with a click.
- Access quick links to Adminer and Mailpit.
- See your database connection credentials.
If you're contributing to Cove, the watch.sh script is helpful. It uses fswatch to monitor file changes and automatically runs the compile.sh script for you.
./watch.shCove is open-source software licensed under the MIT License. Copyright (c) 2025-present, Austin Ginder.