rclone-cli – Coding skill for AI agents

rclone — The Swiss Army Knife of Cloud Storage

When to Use

Use this skill when you need rclone command-line cloud storage manager reference and usage guide. Use this skill whenever the user mentions rclone, or any task involving terminal-based cloud file operations such as upload, download, sync, copy, move, mount, or remote management. Triggers on S3-compatible storage,...

Rclone is a command-line program to manage files on cloud storage. It is a feature-rich alternative to cloud vendors' web storage interfaces. Over 70 cloud storage products support rclone including S3 object stores, business & consumer file storage services, and standard transfer protocols.

Rclone has powerful cloud equivalents to the unix commands rsync, cp, mv, mount, ls, ncdu, tree, rm, and cat. Timestamp preservation and checksum verification depend on backend capabilities and transfer options; they are not guaranteed for every transfer. Transfers can be restarted from the last good file.

Official resources: [rclone.org](https://rclone.org/) | [Docs](https://rclone.org/docs/) | [Commands](https://rclone.org/commands/) | [Install](https://rclone.org/install/) | [Forum](https://forum.rclone.org/) | [GitHub](https://github.com/rclone/rclone)

Prerequisites

Use only a previously installed and reviewed rclone binary. Check its version:

rclone --version

If missing, stop the executable workflow and report the prerequisite. A separate installation task must select an immutable signed release, verify its checksum/signature, stage and inspect it, and obtain approval before installation. Do not pipe a vendor installer to a privileged shell. The historical bundled installer is disabled and does not download or modify anything.

Security Warnings

> IMPORTANT: Rclone is extremely powerful and can irreversibly modify or delete data on cloud storage.

> Pay close attention to the following safety guidelines:

• Always use --dry-run first when running sync, move, delete, or purge commands. This shows what would happen without actually doing it.
• Use --interactive / -i flag while learning rclone to avoid accidental data loss. It asks for confirmation before each destructive operation.
• Never expose credentials in plain text on the command line. Use an interactive configuration flow and restrict access to its file; default password obscuring is reversible, not secure encryption. Environment variables can also leak through logs or process inspection.
• Private keys and tokens (S3 secret keys, service account JSON, OAuth tokens) must never be committed to version control or logged. The config file ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf contains sensitive data — protect it with chmod 600.
• rclone purge ignores all filters — it deletes everything under the specified path. Use with extreme caution.
• rclone sync makes dest identical to source — files in dest that are not in source will be DELETED. Always verify with --dry-run first.
• Remote control API (--rc) should bind to loopback. For deliberate remote access, require authentication (for example --rc-htpasswd), TLS and network restrictions; it can expose powerful operations.
• Mount operations can cause data loss if the mount is interrupted during writes. --vfs-cache-mode full can support writes but requires adequate local disk and successful upload/flush; it is not a durability guarantee.

Quick Reference

Configuration

# Interactive configuration (recommended)
rclone config

# Show a redacted config; manually inspect for residual secrets before sharing
rclone config redacted

# Print decrypted config, including sensitive values (do not share or log)
rclone config show

# List configured remotes
rclone listremotes

# Create a remote non-interactively
rclone config create myremote s3 provider=AWS env_auth=true region=us-east-1

# Update existing remote
rclone config update myremote region=us-west-2

Basic Syntax

rclone subcommand [options] source:path dest:path

Source and destination paths use remote:path syntax. For local paths, just use /path/to/dir.

Core Commands

# List files
rclone ls remote:path                    # list all objects with size
rclone lsd remote:path                   # list directories
rclone lsl remote:path                   # list with size, modtime, path
rclone lsf remote:path                   # list in flexible format
rclone size remote:path                  # total size and object count
rclone tree remote:path                  # tree view

# Copy (does not delete files at destination)
rclone copy /local/path remote:path      # local to remote
rclone copy remote:path /local/path      # remote to local
rclone copy remote1:path remote2:path    # remote to remote (server-side if possible)

# Sync (makes destination identical to source — DELETES extra files at dest)
rclone sync --dry-run /local/path remote:path    # ALWAYS dry-run first!
rclone sync -i /local/path remote:path           # interactive mode

# Move (copies then deletes source)
rclone move /local/path remote:path

# Delete operations
rclone delete remote:path                # delete contents of path
rclone purge remote:path                 # delete path AND all contents (ignores filters!)

# Check integrity
rclone check /local/path remote:path     # compare source and dest
rclone checksum SHA256 SHA256SUMS remote:path  # compare with a trusted SUM file
rclone cryptcheck /local/path crypt:path # compare plaintext source with crypt remote

# Directory operations
rclone mkdir remote:path                 # create directory
rclone rmdir remote:path                 # remove empty directory
rclone rmdirs remote:path                # remove empty directories recursively

# Other useful commands
rclone cat remote:path/file.txt          # output file to stdout
rclone dedupe remote:path                # interactively find/delete duplicates
rclone about remote:                     # get quota information
rclone version                           # show version

Filtering

Filter rules determine which files rclone processes. Always test with --dry-run and -vv.

# Include only specific patterns
rclone copy /src /dst --include "*.jpg"
rclone copy /src /dst --include-from filter-file.txt

# Exclude specific patterns
rclone copy /src /dst --exclude "*.tmp"
rclone copy /src /dst --exclude-from exclude-file.txt

# Use filter rules (preferred when mixing include/exclude)
rclone sync /src /dst --filter "+ *.jpg" --filter "- *"
rclone sync /src /dst --filter-from rules.txt

# Size-based filtering
rclone copy /src /dst --min-size 1M --max-size 10G

# Age-based filtering
rclone copy /src /dst --min-age 7d --max-age 30d

# IMPORTANT: Do NOT mix --include, --exclude, and --filter flags.
# Use --filter exclusively when combining rules.

Filter pattern syntax:

• * matches any sequence of non-separator characters
• ** matches any sequence including separators
• ? matches any single non-separator character
• {a,b} matches pattern alternatives
• {{regexp}} matches using Go regexp

Global Flags (Most Common)

# Verbosity
-v                                        # info level
-vv                                       # debug level (shows filter matches)
--log-level LEVEL                         # DEBUG|INFO|NOTICE|ERROR

# Safety
--dry-run                                 # preview without doing anything
-i, --interactive                         # ask before each operation
--ignore-existing                         # skip files that exist at dest
-I, --ignore-times                        # transfer all, ignore modtime/size

# Transfer control
--transfers N                             # parallel transfers (default 4)
--checkers N                              # parallel checks (default 8)
--bwlimit RATE                            # bandwidth limit (e.g. 10M)
--max-transfer SIZE                       # stop after transferring this much
-c, --checksum                            # use checksum instead of modtime
--size-only                               # compare by size only

# Performance
--multi-thread-streams N                  # multi-thread downloads (default 4)
-P, --progress                            # show real-time progress

# Config
--config STRING                           # config file path
-C, --no-check-dest                       # skip dest check on copy

Mount

# Basic mount
rclone mount remote:path /mnt/remote

# Recommended mount with caching
rclone mount remote:path /mnt/remote \
  --vfs-cache-mode full \
  --vfs-cache-max-size 10G \
  --vfs-read-chunk-size 128M

# Unmount
fusermount -u /mnt/remote                # Linux
umount /mnt/remote                        # macOS

Serve

rclone serve http remote:path             # HTTP file server
rclone serve webdav remote:path           # WebDAV server
rclone serve sftp remote:path             # SF

… (full content is in the download package)