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Dmitriy Malakhov
Dmitriy Malakhov

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3 Ways to Control Your SaaS Payments Without Opening a Dashboard

#cli #ai #saas #tutorial

I manage a SaaS on Creem. I used to have the dashboard open all day — checking subscriptions, looking up failed payments, generating checkout links. Now I don't open it at all.

Last Tuesday at 11pm I got a Slack alert about a past-due subscription. Instead of opening a browser, logging in, and clicking through three screens, I typed creem subs list --status past_due --json | jq '.items[] | {email: .customer.email, product: .product.name}' and had the answer in 2 seconds. Then I paused the subscription, sent the customer an email, and went back to sleep. All from the terminal.

The Creem CLI gives you three increasingly powerful ways to manage payments: direct commands for quick lookups, --json | jq pipelines for analytics and automation, and an MCP server that lets Claude or Cursor manage your store through natural language. Here's the full playbook — with a ready-to-use toolkit repo containing 9 shell scripts, MCP configs, and a Claude Code skill.

Setup (2 minutes) 

brew tap armitage-labs/creem
brew install creem
creem login --api-key creem_test_xxx
creem whoami
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Switch between test and live:

creem config set environment test   # test-api.creem.io
creem config set environment live   # api.creem.io
creem config show                   # verify current state
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Level 1: Direct Commands

Every resource — products, subscriptions, customers, transactions, discounts — is a subcommand:

creem products list              # Table view
creem subs list --status active  # Filter subscriptions
creem customers list             # All customers
creem txn list --limit 5         # Recent transactions
creem discounts get --code LAUNCH20  # Look up a discount
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Run any resource command without a subcommand for an interactive TUI:

creem products     # Navigate with j/k, select with Enter
creem subs         # Same for subscriptions
creem customers    # Browse and inspect
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The TUI is keyboard-driven — j/k to scroll, / to search, Enter to view details. Perfect for quick lookups.

Create Resources 

# New product
creem products create \
  --name "Pro Plan" \
  --price 2900 \
  --billing-type recurring \
  --billing-period every-month

# Checkout link (copy to clipboard)
creem checkouts create \
  --product prod_xxx \
  --success-url "https://myapp.com/thanks" \
  --json | jq -r '.checkoutUrl' | pbcopy
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Subscription Lifecycle

The full lifecycle without opening a browser:

creem subs list --status active       # Who's paying?
creem subs get sub_xxx                # Details + billing dates
creem subs pause sub_xxx              # Pause billing
creem subs resume sub_xxx             # Resume
creem subs cancel sub_xxx             # Cancel (end of period)
creem subs cancel sub_xxx --mode immediate  # Cancel now
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Level 2: --json | jq Pipelines

Every command supports --json. The response shape is always { items: [...] }. This makes the CLI fully composable with jq, shell scripts, and cron jobs.

This is where the terminal approach starts beating the dashboard. You can't GROUP BY product in a web UI. You can't pipe dashboard results into a Slack webhook. You can't run your revenue report at 9am every day automatically. With --json | jq, all of that is one line.

Calculate MRR — the number every SaaS founder checks first:

creem subs list --status active --json | jq '
  [.items[] | .product.price] | add / 100
'
# 125
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Revenue by product:

creem txn list --json | jq '
  [.items[] | select(.status=="paid")]
  | group_by(.description)
  | map({
      product: .[0].description,
      total: ([.[].amount] | add / 100),
      count: length
    })
  | sort_by(-.total)
'
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Customers by country:

creem customers list --json | jq '
  [.items[] | .country]
  | group_by(.) | map({country: .[0], count: length})
  | sort_by(-.count)
'
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High-value transactions (over $20):

creem txn list --json | jq '
  [.items[] | select(.amount > 2000)]
  | map({id: .id, amount: (.amount/100), status: .status})
'
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Product pricing table (tab-separated for spreadsheets):

creem products list --json | jq -r '
  .items[] | [.name, "$\(.price/100)", .billingPeriod] | @tsv
'
# Starter    $9     every-month
# Pro        $29    every-month
# Enterprise $99    every-month
# Lifetime   $49    once
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Find all past-due subscriptions with customer emails — this is the query I ran at 11pm on a Tuesday instead of opening the dashboard:

creem subs list --status past_due --json | jq '
  .items[] | {sub: .id, email: .customer.email, product: .product.name, since: .currentPeriodEndDate}
'
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Bulk generate checkout links for all products:

creem products list --json | jq -r '.items[] | .id' | while read pid; do
  URL=$(creem checkouts create --product "$pid" --success-url "https://myapp.com/thanks" --json | jq -r '.checkoutUrl')
  NAME=$(creem products get "$pid" --json | jq -r '.name')
  echo "$NAME: $URL"
done
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Daily revenue cron job:

#!/bin/bash
# Add to crontab: 0 9 * * * ~/daily-revenue.sh
REVENUE=$(creem txn list --json | jq '[.items[] | select(.status=="paid") | .amount] | add / 100')
SUBS=$(creem subs list --status active --json | jq '.items | length')
echo "$(date +%Y-%m-%d) | Revenue: \$$REVENUE | Active subs: $SUBS" >> ~/creem-daily.log
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Count subscriptions by status:

for status in active trialing past_due paused canceled; do
  COUNT=$(creem subs list --status $status --json | jq '.items | length')
  echo "$status: $COUNT"
done
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Level 3: AI Agent via MCP Server

This is where it gets wild. The creem npm package ships with an MCP server — 22 tools that any MCP-compatible AI agent can call directly via the Creem SDK. This is not a wrapper that shells out to the CLI. The MCP server calls the Creem SDK directly, which means it can do things the CLI can't — create discounts, manage licenses, upgrade subscriptions.

The key insight: other CLI-to-MCP solutions parse text output from shell commands. This one is SDK-native. The AI gets structured data and typed tool definitions, not string-munged terminal output.

Setup for Claude Code / Claude Desktop:

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "creem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "--package", "creem", "--", "mcp", "start",
               "--api-key", "creem_test_xxx",
               "--server-index", "1"]
    }
  }
}
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For Cursor, same format in .cursor/mcp.json.

What the AI can do:

You say MCP tool called
"Show me all active subscriptions" subscriptions-search-subscriptions
"Create a 20% discount for the Pro plan" discounts-create
"Generate a checkout link for Enterprise" checkouts-create
"Pause Bob's subscription" subscriptions-pause
"Activate this license key" licenses-activate
"Upgrade to the Enterprise plan" subscriptions-upgrade

The MCP server exposes tools the CLI doesn't have. discounts-create and discounts-delete are MCP-only — the CLI can read discounts but can't create them. licenses-activate/deactivate/validate and subscriptions-upgrade are also MCP-only. Through MCP, your AI agent has full CRUD access to your store.

All 22 tools:

products-get, products-create, products-search
customers-list, customers-retrieve, customers-generate-billing-links
subscriptions-get, subscriptions-cancel, subscriptions-update,
  subscriptions-upgrade, subscriptions-pause, subscriptions-resume,
  subscriptions-search-subscriptions
checkouts-retrieve, checkouts-create
licenses-activate, licenses-deactivate, licenses-validate
discounts-get, discounts-create, discounts-delete
transactions-get-by-id, transactions-search
stats-get-metrics-summary
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Creem is one of the first payment platforms with native agent support. Their onboarding spec at creem.io/SKILL.md describes 7 routing workflows for AI agents — from selling products to managing subscriptions to handling support tickets.

Bonus: Migrate from Lemon Squeezy

Switching? One command:

creem migrate lemon-squeezy
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Preview first with --dry-run:

creem migrate lemon-squeezy --dry-run
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Or export the migration plan as JSON for review:

creem migrate lemon-squeezy --json > migration-plan.json
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Skip discounts if you want to recreate them manually:

creem migrate lemon-squeezy --exclude-discounts
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The wizard maps your products, pricing, and billing periods. No CSV exports, no manual data entry.

When to Use What

Task CLI JSON + jq MCP Agent
Quick lookup creem subs get id — "Show sub X"
Bulk analysis — jq 'group_by...' "Analyze churn"
Shell scripts creem txn list pipe to jq —
CI/CD CLI commands parse output —
Checkout links creem checkouts create jq .url → pbcopy "Create checkout"
Revenue metrics — jq math transactions-search
Create discounts — — discounts-create (MCP-only)
License management — — licenses-activate/validate (MCP-only)
Migration creem migrate --json > plan.json —

Three interfaces, one payment platform. Use each where it's strongest.

Grab the Toolkit

All the scripts, MCP configs, and the Claude Code skill from this article are packaged in a ready-to-use repo:

git clone https://github.com/malakhov-dmitrii/creem-cli-toolkit
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What's inside:

  • 9 shell scripts — MRR, revenue by product, sub health, checkout links, daily cron, bulk ops, past-due alerts, customers by country, pricing table
  • MCP configs — copy-paste JSON for Claude Code, Cursor, and Claude Desktop
  • Claude Code skill — SKILL.md with full CLI reference and safety rules (install via clawhub install creem-cli-toolkit or copy to .claude/skills/)
  • Demo script — step-through version of all 3 levels for live demos

Get Started 

brew tap armitage-labs/creem && brew install creem
creem login
creem products list
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Terminal to payments in 2 minutes. No dashboard required.

Video walkthrough: youtube.com/watch?v=td6hwGfLvxQ

Built for the Creem Scoops bounty program. CLI v0.1.3, MCP server via creem v1.4.4.

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