AI Assistant and Agent Integration

The DeployHQ CLI includes a local AI assistant for deployment help and integrations for AI coding agents like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.

AI Assistant (dhq assist)

Get AI-powered help for your deployments using a local LLM. All data stays on your machine -- nothing is sent to external AI services.

If you are already using an AI coding agent like Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor, your agent can interact with DeployHQ directly through the CLI and API -- you do not need dhq assist. The local assistant is best suited for developers who want a privacy-first, offline-capable option without relying on an external coding agent. It uses an open-source model via Ollama and keeps all data on your machine.

Setup

The assistant requires Ollama running locally. Run the one-time setup:

dhq assist --setup

This installs Ollama (if needed) and downloads the default model (qwen2.5:3b, approximately 2GB).

Asking Questions

# Ask about a deployment
dhq assist "why did my deploy fail?" -p my-app

# Get suggestions
dhq assist "what should I do?" -p my-app

# Ask about DeployHQ concepts
dhq assist "what does transfer_files do?"

The assistant automatically gathers context from your project (recent deployments, server configuration, logs) to provide relevant answers.

Interactive Mode

For a conversational experience:

dhq assist --interactive -p my-app

Checking Status

Verify that Ollama is running and the model is available:

dhq assist --status

Using a Different Model

dhq assist "why did my deploy fail?" --model llama3.2

Installing the DeployHQ Skill for AI Agents

The CLI can install a DeployHQ "skill" into the AI coding agents on your machine so they can discover and drive dhq commands directly. Supported agents include Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, and Windsurf.

Listing Supported Agents

dhq skills list

This shows every supported AI agent and whether the DeployHQ skill is already installed.

Installing the Skill

# Install for all detected user-scope agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.)
dhq skills install

By default, this installs for the user-scope agents detected on your machine. Project-scope agents (such as GitHub Copilot) are skipped so that running the command never silently modifies the current repository.

To install for a specific agent -- including a project-scope one -- pass --agent:

# Install for a specific agent by name
dhq skills install --agent claude-code

# Install for a project-scope agent (writes into the current repository)
dhq skills install --agent copilot

dhq hello runs dhq skills install as part of guided onboarding, so in most cases you never need to run it separately.

Deprecated: dhq setup

Earlier versions used dhq setup <agent> (for example dhq setup claude) to install per-agent plugins one at a time. That command still works but is deprecated -- prefer dhq skills install, which detects your installed agents automatically.

# Deprecated -- use "dhq skills install" instead
dhq setup claude

Command Catalog

The CLI exposes a full command catalog as JSON, designed for AI agent discovery:

dhq commands --json

This outputs every command, subcommand, flag, and description in a structured format that agents can parse to understand available operations.

Agent-Optimized Help

dhq --help --agent

This outputs help in JSON format optimized for machine consumption.

Agent Identification

When running the CLI from an automation agent, set the DEPLOYHQ_AGENT environment variable to identify the agent:

DEPLOYHQ_AGENT=my-bot dhq deploy -p my-app --json

The CLI also automatically detects common agent environments: - DEPLOYHQ_AGENT environment variable - CLAUDE_CODE or CLAUDECODE environment variable (Claude Code) - CURSOR_AGENT environment variable (Cursor) - WINDSURF_AGENT environment variable (Windsurf) - Standard CI environment variables (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc.)

MCP Server

The CLI includes a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that enables AI assistants like Claude Desktop to interact with DeployHQ:

dhq mcp

This starts the MCP server in stdio mode. For detailed setup and usage instructions, see the MCP Server documentation.

Showing Resources by URL

Resolve a DeployHQ URL to structured data:

dhq show https://mycompany.deployhq.com/projects/my-app

This is useful for AI agents that encounter DeployHQ URLs in conversations or documents.