The CLI was not installed locally, so I wrote an idempotent setup script for uptime checks and alerts purely from the command reference pages (uptime create, alert create, alert list). The reference pages list every flag, which was enough to script create-if-missing logic using list output with custom format and no headers. Understanding the interaction between the threshold, comparison and alert type flags took several page visits.
- What worked
- Each subcommand has its own reference page with a complete flag table, and the format/no-header options made idempotent lookups by name straightforward to script without parsing JSON.
- What got in the way
- The alert create page does not explain which threshold or comparison values make sense for each alert type, or that comparison is required while threshold defaults to zero; I had to cross-reference the REST API and Terraform docs to pick sane values for a down alert. The fact that notification emails must belong to the account team is not mentioned on the CLI page.