chowbea-axios
Commands

watch

Continuously poll for spec changes and regenerate automatically.

The watch command runs a continuous loop that polls your OpenAPI endpoint and regenerates types whenever the spec changes.

Usage

chowbea-axios watch [flags]

What It Does

  1. Polls your API endpoint at regular intervals
  2. Compares spec hash with cached version
  3. Regenerates types and operations when changes detected
  4. Preserves cache on graceful shutdown (Ctrl+C)

Flags

FlagShortDescriptionDefault
--config-cPath to api.config.tomlAuto-detected
--interval-iPolling interval in millisecondsFrom config (10000)
--debug-dShow verbose cycle-by-cycle logsfalse
--quiet-qSuppress non-error outputfalse

Examples

Start Watch Mode

chowbea-axios watch

Custom Polling Interval

# Poll every 5 seconds
chowbea-axios watch --interval 5000

Debug Mode

# See every check cycle
chowbea-axios watch --debug

Output

Normal mode shows only changes:

╭────────────────────────────────────────
│ chowbea-axios watch
├────────────────────────────────────────
│
│ ✓ Starting watch mode - press Ctrl+C to stop (endpoint=http://localhost:3000/docs/swagger/json, intervalMs=10000)
│
│ ✓ New spec detected, regenerating... (cycleId=3, bytes=45231)
│ ✓ Generation completed (cycleId=3, operations=42, duration=1.2s)

Debug mode shows every cycle:

╭────────────────────────────────────────
│ Cycle 1
├────────────────────────────────────────
│   Checking for API changes... (cycleId=1, endpoint=http://localhost:3000/docs/swagger/json)
│   No changes detected, skipping generation (cycleId=1, durationMs=150ms)

Graceful Shutdown

Press Ctrl+C to stop watch mode:

│ ⚠ Shutting down watch mode... (signal=SIGINT)
│ ✓ Cache preserved for next run

The cache is preserved, so your next fetch or watch will continue from where you left off.

Network Failure Handling

If the endpoint becomes unreachable during watch:

  1. Retries 3 times with exponential backoff
  2. Falls back to cached spec if available
  3. Continues watching and tries again next cycle
  4. Reports the failure but doesn't exit
│ ⚠ Cycle failed, will retry next interval (cycleId=5, error=ECONNREFUSED)

Setting Up Concurrent Watch

Run watch mode alongside your dev server with the concurrent script set up by init:

package.json
{
  "scripts": {
    "dev:all": "concurrently --names 'api,dev' \"npm run api:watch\" \"npm run dev\""
  }
}

Then:

npm run dev:all

This shows both outputs with labels:

[api] │ ✓ Starting watch mode...
[dev] Starting development server...
[dev] Server running at http://localhost:5173
[api] │ ✓ New spec detected, regenerating...

Configuration

You can configure watch behavior in api.config.toml:

api.config.toml
# Polling interval (overridden by --interval flag)
poll_interval_ms = 10000

[watch]
# Enable debug logging by default
debug = false

Best Practices

  1. Use reasonable intervals - 5-10 seconds is usually enough
  2. Enable debug only when troubleshooting
  3. Set up concurrent script for seamless development
  4. Don't run in production - use fetch in CI/CD instead

Next Steps

status Command

Configuration

generate

Generate types and operations from cached or local spec.

status

Show current state of your API client setup.

On this page

Usage
What It Does
Flags
Examples
Start Watch Mode
Custom Polling Interval
Debug Mode
Output
Graceful Shutdown
Network Failure Handling
Setting Up Concurrent Watch
Configuration
Best Practices
Next Steps