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