Tilt Development Environment Skill

Tilt Development Environment

Automatic Reload Behaviors

Tilt live-reloads aggressively. Never suggest restarting tilt up or manually refreshing resources—Tilt handles this automatically in nearly all cases.

What Reloads Automatically

| Change Type | What Happens | Your Action | |------------|--------------|-------------| | Tiltfile edits | Tilt re-evaluates the entire Tiltfile on save | Just save the file | | Source code with live_update | Files sync to container without rebuild | Just save the file | | Source code without live_update | Full image rebuild triggers automatically | Just save the file | | Kubernetes manifests | Resources re-apply automatically | Just save the file | | Frontend with HMR | Browser updates via Hot Module Replacement | Just save the file | | Backend with watch tools | Process restarts via nodemon/air/watchexec | Just save the file |

When Restart IS Actually Needed

Restarting tilt up is required only for:

Tilt version upgrades
Changing Tilt's port or host settings
Recovering from Tilt crashes
Kubernetes context changes (switching clusters)

Verifying Updates Applied

Instead of restarting, verify updates propagated:

# Check resource status after saving
tilt get uiresource/<name> -o json | jq '.status.updateStatus'

# Watch for update completion
tilt wait --for=condition=Ready uiresource/<name> --timeout=60s

# Check recent logs for reload confirmation
tilt logs <resource> --since 1m
tilt logs <resource> --since 5m | rg -i "reload|restart|updated|synced"

Running tilt up

Always run tilt up in a tmux session using send-keys. This ensures:

Tilt survives Claude Code session reloads
Shell initialization runs (PATH, direnv, etc.)

SESSION=$(basename $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null) || basename $PWD)

# Start tilt in tmux (idempotent, send-keys for proper shell init)
if ! tmux has-session -t "$SESSION" 2>/dev/null; then
  tmux new-session -d -s "$SESSION" -n tilt
  tmux send-keys -t "$SESSION:tilt" 'tilt up' Enter
  echo "Started tilt in tmux session: $SESSION"
elif ! tmux list-windows -t "$SESSION" -F '#{window_name}' | grep -q "^tilt$"; then
  tmux new-window -t "$SESSION" -n tilt
  tmux send-keys -t "$SESSION:tilt" 'tilt up' Enter
  echo "Added tilt window to session: $SESSION"
else
  echo "Tilt already running in session: $SESSION"
fi

To check tilt output:

SESSION=$(basename $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null) || basename $PWD)
tmux capture-pane -p -t "$SESSION:tilt" -S -50

To stop tilt:

SESSION=$(basename $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null) || basename $PWD)
tmux send-keys -t "$SESSION:tilt" C-c

Never run tilt up directly in foreground or with run_in_background. Always use tmux.

Instructions

Use tilt get uiresources -o json to query resource status programmatically
Use tilt get uiresource/<name> -o json for detailed single resource state
Use tilt logs with --since, --tail, --json flags for log retrieval
Use tilt trigger <resource> to force updates when auto-reload didn't trigger
Use tilt wait to block until resources reach ready state
For Tiltfile authoring, see @TILTFILE_API.md
For complete CLI reference with JSON parsing patterns, see @CLI_REFERENCE.md

Quick Reference

Check Resource Status

tilt get uiresources -o json | jq '.items[] | {name: .metadata.name, runtime: .status.runtimeStatus, update: .status.updateStatus}'

Wait for Resource Ready

tilt wait --for=condition=Ready uiresource/<name> --timeout=120s

Get Resource Logs

tilt logs <resource>              # Current logs
tilt logs <resource> --since 5m   # Logs from last 5 minutes
tilt logs <resource> --tail 100   # Last 100 lines
tilt logs --json                  # JSON Lines output

Trigger Update

tilt trigger <resource>

Lifecycle Commands

tilt up        # Start Tilt
tilt down      # Stop and clean up
tilt ci        # CI/batch mode

Resource Status Values

RuntimeStatus: unknown, none, pending, ok, error, not_applicable
UpdateStatus: none, pending, in_progress, ok, error, not_applicable

References

Tilt Documentation: https://docs.tilt.dev/
CLI Reference: https://docs.tilt.dev/cli/tilt.html
Tiltfile API: https://docs.tilt.dev/api.html
Extensions: https://github.com/tilt-dev/tilt-extensions

Agent Skills: Tilt Development Environment

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