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Command: chaos explain

The chaos explain command provides a built-in documentation system. It offers a didactic way to learn about Ch-aOS concepts, commands, and features directly from the command line.

The content is provided by plugins, meaning the documentation lives alongside the functionality it describes.

Usage

chaos explain [topic] [options]

  • [topic]: The topic you want an explanation for.

  • [options]: Flags to modify the command's behavior.

Discovering Topics

You can discover all available topics provided by your installed plugins using chaos check.

chaos check explanations

Reading Explanations

To read about a topic, simply pass its name to the command.

# Get a basic explanation of the 'apply' command
chaos explain apply

Sub-topics

Many topics are broken down into more specific sub-topics. You can access them using a dot (.) notation.

  • To list all available sub-topics for a given topic, use .list.

  • To read a specific sub-topic, use topic.subtopic.

Examples: 

# List all sub-topics for the 'secrets' command
chaos explain secrets.list

# Get an explanation for the 'edit' subcommand of 'secrets'
chaos explain secrets.edit

Detail Level (-d, --details, -c, --complexity)

You can request more detailed information using the --details flag. This allows you to progressively drill down from a high-level concept to technical specifics.

You can also specify the complexity level of the explanation using the --complexity flag. This adjusts the depth and technicality of the content.

The available levels are:

  • basic (default)

  • intermediate

  • advanced

Example: 

# Get an advanced explanation of sops integration, including technical details
chaos explain secrets.sops --details advanced