Update installed artifacts

Your catalog moved forward and you want the newer versions on this machine. This guide shows how to see what is behind, update everything or a chosen set, and read the result. For the complete flag surface, see the update reference.

See what is behind

Two read-only ways.

rigger check prints an advisory --- Updates --- section listing every installed artifact behind its catalog’s latest version, and a --- Catalogs --- section with per-catalog status:

--- Catalogs ---
  [up-to-date]   example  (v0.4.0)

These sections are informational: they never change check’s exit code. A stale entry there is a heads-up, not a failure.

rigger update with no ids classifies every installed artifact and shows a plan before it touches anything. Decline the confirmation to keep everything as it is.

Update everything or a chosen set

All installed artifacts:

rigger update

Specific qualified ids:

rigger update example/skill:hello-rigger

An unqualified id is rejected before any fetch:

[error] unqualified id "skill:hello-rigger" — use `<catalog>/skill:hello-rigger` (see `rigger ls`)

Read the outcome

Each candidate ends in one of three states:

• [updated] <id> → <ref>: was behind, now re-installed at <ref>.
• [up-to-date] <id> (<ref>): already at the latest version, nothing touched.
• [skipped] <id> <reason>: not acted on. The reason is not installed (no manifest entry for this scope and assistant) or no remote version (installed without a catalog ref, so there is nothing to compare against).

A run where everything is current looks like this (the CLI prints each outcome line indented two spaces; the samples here are shown flush-left):

[up-to-date]  example/skill:hello-rigger  (v0.4.0)
[up-to-date]  example/agent:demo  (v0.4.0)

When nothing is installed, update has no candidate to classify: it makes no changes, prints nothing, and exits 0.

The confirm is transactional

Updating a stale artifact removes the old version and applies the new one under a single lock. The confirmation always comes before any removal:

Update N artifact(s):
  <id>  <old-ref> → <new-ref>

Decline it and nothing is removed or written: the artifact stays at its installed version. A network failure or an invalid fetched catalog aborts the same way, before the removal, so a failed update never leaves you with a half-removed artifact. Files that are replaced are backed up as .bak-* copies first.

Automate it

In a script or CI job, pass --yes to accept the confirmation up front:

rigger update --yes

Without a TTY and without --yes, update exits 2 before any network access. See CI and scripts.