Command and flags

argus [globs...]

Positional arguments are globs of test files to discover and run. With none, the defaults are **/*.test.ts and **/*.test.tsx.

Flags

Flag	Short	Default	Purpose
--timeout <ms>	-t	10000	Per-file Hermes timeout
--concurrency <n>	-c	CPU count, capped at 8	Max files in flight
--config <path>		searched for	Config file to use, instead of searching
--hermes <path>		—	Hermes binary to use, overrides ARGUS_HERMES
--engine <name>		the engine your react-native ships	legacy or v1
--provision		off	Authorise building Hermes from source
--help	-h		Print usage and exit 0

Environment

Variable	Effect
ARGUS_HERMES	Hermes binary path. Overridden by --hermes.
NO_COLOR / FORCE_COLOR	Honoured — colour comes from Node’s util.styleText.

--timeout

argus --timeout 30000 "src/**/*.test.ts"

Applies to the whole Hermes process for one file, not to individual tests. Exceeding it kills the process and reports the file as timeout, exit code 2.

There is no per-test timeout. The unit of isolation is the file, so the unit of timeout is too.

Only a strict positive integer is accepted, the same rule --concurrency has always had:

✗ Usage error: Invalid --timeout value: "abc". Must be a positive integer (e.g. 5000, 30000).

Before 0.1.1 an unparseable value was silently replaced by the 10 000 ms default, so a typo produced a full green run under a timeout nobody chose.

--concurrency

argus -c 1 "src/**/*.test.ts"    # sequential — useful when debugging
argus -c 16 "src/**/*.test.ts"

Defaults to availableParallelism() clamped to 8. Each unit is a full process, so pushing it far past your core count buys nothing.

Only a strict positive integer is accepted. 0, negatives, 1.5, 1e2 and 2abc are all rejected with a usage error and exit code 2 — a silently coerced concurrency is a performance mystery waiting to happen.

--engine

argus --engine v1 "src/**/*.test.ts"
argus --engine legacy "src/**/*.test.ts"

Only legacy and v1 are accepted. A typo is rejected, never ignored — silently falling back to the default would run the tests on an engine you did not ask for, which is the exact failure this flag exists to prevent.

Asking for an engine your project does not pin is a usage error:

--engine legacy is not available: react-native 0.87.0 pins only: v1.

--hermes

argus --hermes /opt/hermes/bin/hermes "src/**/*.test.ts"

Outranks everything, and is not probed before selection: naming a path entitles you to an error about that path rather than a silent fallback onto another binary.

If it turns out to be a different engine than your project targets, you get the mismatch warning — a warning, not a refusal.

--provision

argus --provision "src/**/*.test.ts"

Authorises a source build when nothing else in the chain can supply a binary. Needs git, cmake and ninja. Never happens without this flag — a multi-minute build is not something to trigger by accident.

Globs

Quote them. Unquoted globs are expanded by your shell before Argus sees them, which usually works and occasionally does something surprising with **.

argus "src/**/*.test.ts"                       # ✓
argus "src/**/*.test.ts" "lib/**/*.test.tsx"   # ✓ several
argus src/cart.test.ts                         # ✓ a literal path

Positional globs override the config file’s include entirely. node_modules, dist, build, coverage and .git are excluded from discovery by default — see exclude to change that.

Report order follows discovery order even though execution is parallel, so output is stable run to run.

A run that matches zero files exits 2. There is no passWithNoTests yet — it is on the roadmap.

--config

argus --config config/ci.config.ts

Names a config file instead of searching for one. A path that does not exist is an error, not a fall back to the defaults.

Without it, Argus searches upward from the working directory for argus.config.ts, .mts, .js, .mjs, .config/argus.config.ts, then a package.json field — first hit wins, and the walk stops at the first package.json.

Everything a config file can set, and which source wins when two disagree: Configuration.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Every test passed
1	At least one test failed
2	Something else went wrong — infra failure, timeout, protocol failure, usage error, or zero files matched

Details: Reporting and exit codes.