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Quickstart: Get started with Azure DevOps CLI

Azure DevOps Services

This quickstart shows how to install and start using the Azure DevOps extension for the Azure Command Line Interface (CLI). The extension adds commands for managing Azure DevOps Services from the command line so you can script and automate common tasks.

What you'll learn:

  • How to install the Azure DevOps extension for Azure CLI.
  • How to sign in, configure defaults, and get help for commands.
  • How to open Azure DevOps in a browser from the CLI.

Quick steps:

  1. Install Azure CLI (if not already installed).
  2. Add or update the Azure DevOps extension.
  3. Sign in and set default organization/project.
  4. Run az devops --help or open an artifact with --open.

Note

The Azure DevOps CLI extension works only with Azure DevOps Services (cloud). It doesn't support Azure DevOps Server (on-premises).

Install and update

  1. Install Azure CLI. Follow the steps in Install the Azure CLI. After installation, verify your version:
az --version

  1. Add the Azure DevOps extension.

    az extension add --name azure-devops

    If you already have the extension installed, and want to make sure you have the latest version, run the update command:

    az extension update --name azure-devops

  2. To confirm the installation, run the command az extension list or az extension show --name azure-devops.

  3. To sign in, run the az login command. Azure CLI supports only interactive sign-in using user name and password with az login. To sign in using a Personal Access Token (PAT), see Sign in via Azure DevOps PAT.

    Note

    The Azure DevOps extension doesn't currently support authenticating by using Managed Identities.

  4. We recommend that you set the default configuration for your organization and project. Otherwise, you can specify the values in the individual commands themselves.

    az devops configure --defaults organization=https://dev.azure.com/contoso project=ContosoWebApp

Enable AI assistance for Azure DevOps

For enhanced productivity across your Azure DevOps workflow, use the Azure DevOps MCP Server to enable AI assistance with your project data. Get intelligent insights for daily standups, sprint planning, code reviews, project reporting, pull request analysis, and work item management—all through natural language queries to your AI assistant. For more information and installation instructions, see the Azure DevOps MCP Server overview.

Use commands

Adding the Azure DevOps Extension adds devops, pipelines, artifacts, boards, and repos groups.

For usage and help content for any command, specify the --help parameter, for example:

az devops --help

Group
    az devops : Manage Azure DevOps organization level operations.
        Related Groups
        az pipelines: Manage Azure Pipelines
        az boards: Manage Azure Boards
        az repos: Manage Azure Repos
        az artifacts: Manage Azure Artifacts.
   
Subgroups:
    admin            : Manage administration operations.
    extension        : Manage extensions.
    project          : Manage team projects.
    security         : Manage security related operations.
    service-endpoint : Manage service endpoints/service connections.
    team             : Manage teams.
    user             : Manage users.
    wiki             : Manage wikis.

Commands:
    configure        : Configure the Azure DevOps CLI or view your configuration.
    feedback         : Displays information on how to provide feedback to the Azure DevOps CLI team.
    invoke           : This command will invoke request for any DevOps area and resource. Please use
                       only json output as the response of this command is not fixed. Helpful docs -
                       https://free.blessedness.top/rest/api/azure/devops/.
    login            : Set the credential (PAT) to use for a particular organization.
    logout           : Clear the credential for all or a particular organization.

Open items in browser

You can use --open parameter to open any artifact in Azure DevOps portal in your default browser.

az pipelines build show --id 1 --open

This command shows the details of the build with --id 1 in the Command Prompt window and also opens it in the default browser.

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