tl;dr Convex 1.33.0 has a lot of CLI improvements for users & coding agents
## Agentic coding improvements
```txt
export CONVEX_AGENT_MODE=anonymous
npx convex init
npx convex env set --from-file .env.agent
npx convex dev --once
npx convex run seed:addSeedData
```
- `npx convex init` allows you to ensure a deployment is initialized, but not try to push code to it yet, allowing an agent to set required environment variables before pushing code.
- The CLI will now auto-start the local backend to run `convex env` and `convex run` commands.
- `npx convex env set` can now accept values interactively, from a file or stdin. For one or many values at once. e.g. `npx convex env set < .env.cloud`. It will refuse to overwrite conflicting values without `--force`, making it generally safe to run.
- Saving env variables with `npx convex env list > .env.cloud` now works for multi-line and other fancy values.
- Setting up a new backend (agent or otherwise) no longer clobbers your `convex/tsconfig.json` or `README.md`.
- Local development data (including anonymous agent backends) now live in your project’s `.convex` folder, making worktree isolation easier. (Convex 1.32)
- There’s an `insights` MCP tool as well as `npx convex insights` that agents (and humans) can use to debug issues in production and other cloud deployments. (Convex 1.32)
We made other improvements, including fixing one class of circular type errors. See the [CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/get-convex/convex-backend/blob/main/npm-packages/convex/CHANGELOG.md) for more details.
cc @everyone
ian · 4d ago
