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Introduction

bb is a command-line interface for Bitbucket Cloud. It wraps the Bitbucket REST API so you can manage branches, pull requests, pipelines, and deployment environments directly from the terminal — without opening a browser.

Why another CLI?​

The official Bitbucket web UI is slow when you just want to glance at a PR, trigger a pipeline, or rotate a secured env var. Switching contexts from editor → terminal → browser → back to editor adds up.

bb collapses that back into the terminal:

bb branch list                           # what's in flight?
bb pr view 42                            # quick look at a PR
bb pr comments 42 --unresolved           # open review threads only
bb pipeline run main                     # kick off a build
bb env variables --env-name Production   # inspect prod config

Design principles​

  • Small surface, clean output. Each command does one thing, and every command respects the global --output-style flag so you can pick normal (human-readable tables), json (for piping into jq), or ai (minimal, token-efficient text for LLMs).
  • Local-first. Your Atlassian API token lives at ~/.bb-cli-config.json (mode 600). No cloud component, no telemetry.
  • Scriptable. Every command returns sensible exit codes and can be piped safely.
  • Testable. bb is built with clean architecture — domain logic is isolated from HTTP, git, and the terminal. The full acceptance test suite runs against a fake Bitbucket server so every behaviour is locked in.

What's next​

Head to the install guide to get bb on your machine, then set up credentials in the authentication guide.