Pulumi stack autocompletion

Mar 4, 2025 - Last update: Mar 12, 2025

Pulumi is one of the best Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools available. It allows you to manage your infrastructure using general-purpose programming languages, such as Python or Go.

Using autocomplete can save you a lot of time because you don’t have to type the entire command manually. By default, you can generate autocomplete functionality for Pulumi with the following command:

pulumi gen-completion bash

pulumi gen-completion zsh

pulumi gen-completion fish

While this command works well, it does not autocomplete stack names. For instance, if your project/stack structure looks like this:

-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff     58 14 Oct  2023 Pulumi.prod.yaml
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff     58 14 Oct  2023 Pulumi.staging.yaml
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff     58 14 Oct  2023 Pulumi.development.yaml
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff     65 14 Oct  2023 Pulumi.yaml
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff   4119 14 Oct  2023 go.mod
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff  29527 14 Oct  2023 go.sum
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff   2039 14 Oct  2023 main.go

When you run Pulumi with an explicitly defined stack name using the -s STACK_NAME option, you must manually enter the stack name. However, you can easily add autocompletion for stack names by adding the following code to your shell profile:

__my_init_completion()
{
    COMPREPLY=()
    _get_comp_words_by_ref "$@" cur prev words cword
}

_pulumi_custom_stack_completion() {
    local cur prev words cword

    if declare -F _init_completion >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        _init_completion -s || return
    else
        __my_init_completion -n "=" || return
    fi

    if [[ ${prev} == "-s" || ${prev} == "--stack" ]]; then
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$(ls Pulumi.*.yaml 2>/dev/null | sed -E 's/Pulumi\.(.*)\.yaml/\1/')" -- "$cur") )
        # If there's only one completion, remove the 'nospace' option
        if [[ ${#COMPREPLY[@]} -eq 1 ]]; then
            compopt +o nospace 2>/dev/null
        fi
    else
        __start_pulumi
    fi
}

complete -o default -F _pulumi_custom_stack_completion pulumi

#compdef pulumi

_pulumi_custom_stack_completion() {
  local curcontext="$curcontext" state line
  typeset -A opt_args

  _arguments -s -S \
    '(-s --stack)'{-s,--stack}'[specify stack]:stack name:->stacks' \
    '*:: :->args'

  case $state in
    stacks)
      local -a stack_list
      stack_list=($(ls Pulumi.*.yaml 2>/dev/null | sed -E 's/Pulumi\.(.*)\.yaml/\1/'))
      _describe -t stacks 'stack names' stack_list
      ;;
    *)
      # Fall back to default Pulumi completion if available
      _pulumi
      ;;
  esac
}

_pulumi_custom_stack_completion "$@"

function _pulumi_stack_completion
    # Get the current word being completed
    set -l cur (commandline -t)

    # Complete only for -s or --stack flags
    set -l prev (commandline -opc)[-1]
    if contains -- $prev "-s" "--stack"
        # List Pulumi stacks from yaml files
        for file in Pulumi.*.yaml
            if test -f "$file"
                # Extract stack name by removing Pulumi. prefix and .yaml suffix
                set -l stack (string replace -r '^Pulumi\.(.*)\.yaml$' '$1' $file)
                echo $stack
            end
        end
    else
        # Default Pulumi options
        complete -C "pulumi " # Triggers Pulumi's built-in completion if available
    end
end

complete -c pulumi -f # -f prevents filename completion
complete -c pulumi -s s -l stack -a "(_pulumi_stack_completion)" -d "Select a stack"

After updating your profile, the shell will suggest the correct stack name after you type -s, rather than offering a file name.