Prolific CLI

A command-line interface for Prolific

CLI application for getting information out of Prolific about your research studies.

This CLI is an experimental, open, proof of concept project from engineers at Prolific. As such, there may be discrepancies with the Prolific API.

CLI application for retrieving data from the Prolific Platform

Usage:
  prolific [command]

Available Commands:
  campaign     Provide details about your campaigns
  completion   Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
  credentials  Manage credential pools
  filter-sets  Manage and view your filter sets
  help         Help about any command
  hook         Manage and view your hook subscriptions
  message      Send and retrieve messages
  participant  Manage and view your participant groups
  project      Manage and view your projects in a workspace
  requirements List all eligibility requirements available for your study
  studies      List all of your studies
  study        Manage and view your studies
  submission   Manage and view your study submissions
  whoami       View details about your account
  workspace    Manage and view your workspaces

Flags:
      --config string   config file (default is $HOME/.config/prolific-oss/prolific.yaml)
  -h, --help            help for prolific
  -v, --version         version for prolific

Use "prolific [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Main features include:

• Ability to list and filter studies.
• Ability to list submissions for a given study.
• Ability to list studies and define which fields to do display in a table format.
• Ability to render details about a study, and the submissions.
• Ability to create and update credential pools for studies requiring authentication.
• Ability to download credentials usage report for a study as CSV.
• Ability to create a Study via a YAML/JSON configuration file.
• Ability to publish a study whilst creating it (if you have sufficient funds).
• Ability to silently create a study, meaning you can script creating many studies in one go.
• Ability to get your user account details.
• Ability to list your hook subscriptions.
• Ability to send and retrieve messages.
• Ability to list and view your filter sets
• Ability to list and view your participant groups

Checkout the wiki for more tips and tricks.

Requirements

If you are wanting to build and develop this, you will need the following items installed. If, however, you just want to run the application I recommend using a binary (See below).

• Go version 1.26+

Configuration

You can create studies via a configuration file. See some examples in /docs/examples. It's one study per file.

You can then create a study by calling:

prolific study create -t docs/examples/standard-sample.yaml

You can also define some defaults in the configuration file: $HOME/.config/prolific-oss/prolific.yaml.

Currently you can define the following:

workspace: xxxxxxxxxx

Environment variables

You will need the following environment variables defining:

export PROLIFIC_TOKEN=""

You can create a Researcher token in your account.

You can optionally override the URL for the API too. This will be set as default to the Prolific API URL. You can override this if Prolific have granted you access to a different environment.

export PROLIFIC_URL="https://api.prolific.com"

Installation

You can install this application a few ways:

git clone https://github.com/prolific-oss/cli.git
cd cli
make all
./prolific

go install github.com/prolific-oss/cli/cmd/prolific@latest

Development with Claude Code

When implementing new CLI commands, use the /cli-command-create skill.

Option 1: Natural Language

Simply describe what command you want to create:

Create a new command to publish collections

Add a command that lets users delete studies

Claude will ask follow-up questions to gather the ticket number, API contract, and other details.

Option 2: Slash Command with Arguments

Use the slash command with optional arguments:

/cli-command-create

Or provide arguments directly (ticket, resource, command, command-type):

/cli-command-create DCP-2190 collection publish CREATE

/cli-command-create DCP-2200 study delete ACTION

Argument order: [ticket] [resource] [command] [command-type]

If any arguments are omitted, Claude will ask for them interactively.

What the Skill Does

1. Gathers requirements (API contract, flags, command type)
2. Presents an implementation plan for approval
3. Implements model, client, command, UI renderers, mocks, and tests
4. Verifies with make test and make lint

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see our Contributing Guide for details on how to get started.

Release Process

Releases are managed via GitHub Releases with changelog generation powered by git-cliff.

1. Generate changelog

make changelog VERSION=0.0.60

This generates grouped release notes from conventional commits, merges any hand-written notes from the ## next section of CHANGELOG.md, and updates the changelog file.

2. Create a release PR

Create a PR with the updated CHANGELOG.md and apply the release label.

One CI gate will validate the PR:

• Changelog gate — confirms CHANGELOG.md is modified when the release label is present.

3. Merge to trigger the release

Merging the PR to main triggers .github/workflows/create-release.yml on that push. The workflow only performs a release when the merged PR has the release label (it checks linked PRs for that label); other pushes to main do not create tags or releases.

When a release runs, it automatically:

1. Extracts the version from the top-most ## x.y.z section in CHANGELOG.md
2. Creates and pushes a vx.y.z git tag
3. Creates a GitHub Release titled vx.y.z (always use the v prefix for tags and release names, e.g. v1.0.1, not 1.0.1) with the matching changelog section as release notes
4. Builds binaries for multiple platforms (darwin, linux, windows, freebsd) and uploads them to the release

Users can then download binaries from the release page or use go install.