nat-ui

The CLI has two commands. init configures a project; add copies components into it.

If your project already uses shadcn, you can skip this CLI entirely — every component is published in shadcn's registry format too, and installation shows how to add one with the CLI you already have.

nat-ui <command> [options]

Commands
  init                 Configure a project to use nat-ui
  add <component...>   Add components to your project

Options
  -y, --yes            Accept every default without asking
      --overwrite      Replace files that already exist
      --all            Add every item in the registry, libraries included
      --registry <url> Use a different registry
  -v, --version        Print the version
  -h, --help           Show this message

--yes and --overwrite are not two ways of saying the same thing. --yes takes every default, and the default for a file you already have is to keep it, so --yes answers no to the overwrite question. --overwrite is what answers yes. Replacing files you have already edited has the details.

`init`

Covered in Installation. It takes --yes and nothing else: passing --overwrite, --all, or --registry to it is an error rather than a silent no-op, because all three would suggest a behaviour it does not have.

`add`

pnpm dlx @nat-ui/cli@latest add button

Components are copied into the directory your components.json names, with imports rewritten to your aliases. You can name several at once, and naming a component pulls in whatever it depends on.

Replacing files you have already edited

add will not overwrite an existing file without asking. --overwrite answers yes in advance:

pnpm dlx @nat-ui/cli@latest add button --overwrite

This discards local edits to the files it writes. That is the point of the flag, but it is worth a clean git tree first.

Every other way of not being asked declines. That covers a non-TTY stdin, and it covers --yes: adding a component you already have with add button --yes prints Left components/ui/button.tsx alone, since it already exists. and exits 0 without writing anything. If what you want is an update — in a CI job, say — --overwrite is the flag to reach for, on its own or alongside --yes.

Installing everything

--all installs every item the registry lists, libraries included, rather than only the components you name:

pnpm dlx @nat-ui/cli@latest add --all

Passing it alongside component names is an error rather than a merge, since obeying one would mean ignoring the other:

Pass either --all or component names, not both.

Pointing at a different registry

--registry takes the base URL that item JSON is fetched from, which is useful for a fork or a private mirror:

pnpm dlx @nat-ui/cli@latest add button --registry https://example.com/r

The NAT_UI_REGISTRY_URL environment variable does the same for a whole shell session. The flag beats the environment variable, which beats the built-in default.

Limitations

add writes TypeScript. A project configured with "tsx": false is not supported yet — init will accept the answer, but add then refuses rather than writing TypeScript into a JavaScript project.

CLI

init