Tooling
Shopware provides official tools that support the full lifecycle of a Shopware project, from development to deployment and long-term maintenance.
Choosing the right CLI
Shopware projects use two main command-line entry points:
| Tool | Use it for |
|---|---|
bin/console | Commands provided by the Shopware application itself, such as plugin lifecycle commands, database migrations, cache clearing, scheduled tasks, and system inspection. |
shopware-cli | Project and extension tooling around Shopware, such as creating projects, running the development environment, building assets, validating and packaging extensions, Store interaction, and CI workflows. |
shopware-cli project console <command> | Running a Shopware bin/console command through Shopware CLI when you want the CLI to resolve the project context for you. |
swx <command> | Short alias for shopware-cli project console <command>, useful for daily development commands. |
shopware-cli project dev | Starting the interactive local development environment and TUI for managing the Docker-based stack, logs, watchers, and common development tasks. |
As a rule of thumb: use bin/console for application-level Shopware commands, use shopware-cli for project, extension, build, CI, and development-environment workflows, and use swx when you want a quick wrapper around bin/console.
Raw commands, helper commands, or deployment tooling?
Use the lowest-level command that fits the task, but prefer helper or deployment tooling when the same steps need to be repeated reliably.
| Situation | Prefer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Running a one-off Shopware application command locally | bin/console | Direct access to commands provided by the Shopware application. |
| Running common Shopware commands during daily development | shopware-cli project console <command> or swx <command> | Wraps bin/console through Shopware CLI and resolves the project context for you. |
| Starting or managing the local development stack | shopware-cli project dev | Provides the interactive development environment for the Docker-based stack, logs, watchers, and common development tasks. |
| Building a project in CI | shopware-cli project ci | Produces a reproducible build artifact with dependencies and assets prepared before deployment. |
| Installing, updating, or maintaining a deployed instance | Deployment Helper | Automates deploy-time tasks such as install/update detection, migrations, extension management, maintenance mode, cache handling, and one-time commands. |
| Debugging an exceptional production issue manually | Raw commands, carefully | Useful for investigation, but repeated deployment or maintenance steps should move into Deployment Helper configuration. |
As a rule of thumb: use raw bin/console commands for direct local or diagnostic work, Shopware CLI helpers for daily development convenience, and Deployment Helper for repeatable deployment and maintenance workflows.
Available tooling
Development Environment: The Docker-based development environment with an interactive terminal dashboard that manages your entire stack, streams logs, and controls watchers.
Admin Extension SDK: an NPM library for Shopware 6 apps and plugins that need an easy way to extend or customize the Administration.
bin/console: Shopware's built-in CLI, used for installing and activating plugins, running database migrations, clearing caches, executing scheduled tasks, and inspecting system state. See command reference guide.Deployment Helper: Supports database and maintenance operations for deployments (e.g., migrations, cache handling).
Fixture Bundle: Seed development environments with demo and test data.
For IDE support, Shopware provides a PHPStorm plugin and VS Code extension.
Shopware CLI: The central command-line tool for working with Shopware projects and extensions, including scaffolding, builds, validation, packaging, Store interaction, CI support, and development workflows such as watchers and formatting.
MCP Server: A native Model Context Protocol server that lets AI clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code) interact with a Shopware shop through tools, resources, and prompts. Extensible via plugins and apps.
