01.22.2026 CLI Prompt Commands: Pipe Prompts to AI Assistants

CLI Reference

Full documentation

npm

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Overview

Phoenix CLI now supports prompt introspection with two new commands: px prompts and px prompt. These commands let you list, view, and export prompt templates directly from the terminal—and pipe them to AI coding assistants for optimization.

# List all prompts
px prompts

# View a specific prompt
px prompt my-evaluator

# Get prompt text for piping
px prompt my-evaluator --format text --no-progress

Prompt Optimization with AI Assistants

The --format text option outputs prompt content in a clean format with XML-style role tags, designed for piping to AI assistants like Claude Code:

# Get optimization suggestions
px prompt my-evaluator --format text --no-progress | claude -p "Review this prompt and suggest improvements"

# Analyze for edge cases
px prompt my-assistant --format text --no-progress | claude -p "What edge cases might this prompt fail to handle?"

# Generate test inputs
px prompt my-classifier --format text --no-progress | claude -p "Generate 5 diverse test inputs for this prompt"

The text output format:

<system>You are an expert evaluator...

<rubric>
A correct answer:
- Matches the reference exactly
- Contains no hallucinations
</rubric></system>
<user>Evaluate this response: {{output}}</user>

Use Cases

Prompt Version Management

Access specific versions of your prompts:

# Get the production-tagged version
px prompt my-assistant --tag production

# Get a specific version by ID
px prompt my-assistant --version UHJvbXB0VmVyc2lvbjox

Prompt Analysis

Export prompts for offline analysis or documentation:

# Full JSON with model settings and tools
px prompt my-evaluator --format json

# List all prompts as JSON
px prompts --format raw --no-progress | jq '.[].name'

Interactive Development

Ask AI assistants to work with your prompts directly:

Fetch my "correctness-evaluator" prompt from Phoenix and help me make the rubric more specific for code review tasks

Why This Matters

Prompts are code. They should be versioned, reviewed, and optimized with the same rigor as application code. By making prompts accessible through the CLI:

1. Version Control Integration: Export prompts to files for git tracking
2. AI-Assisted Optimization: Pipe prompts to Claude, GPT, or other models for improvement suggestions
3. Automated Testing: Generate test cases programmatically from prompt templates
4. Documentation: Extract prompt content for technical documentation

This continues the pattern of making Phoenix data accessible where developers already work—in the terminal and through AI coding assistants.

Commands Reference

px prompts

List all prompts with names and descriptions.

Option	Description
--format <format>	pretty, json, or raw
--limit <number>	Maximum prompts to fetch

px prompt <identifier>

Show a specific prompt’s content and configuration.

Option	Description
--tag <name>	Get version by tag
--version <id>	Get specific version
--format <format>	pretty, json, raw, or text

The text format is optimized for piping—no progress messages, just the prompt content with role tags.

Installation

npm install -g @arizeai/phoenix-cli

Or update an existing installation:

npm update -g @arizeai/phoenix-cli