Discovery

Discovery is about getting the relevant portal context in as few commands as possible, before changing anything.

ldev does not invent a new portal API. It wraps the existing ones — Liferay's Headless API, JSONWS, and the local runtime — and returns consolidated, structured snapshots. One call to portal inventory page typically returns what would otherwise require several Headless API calls plus glue code.

That makes it useful in three places:

• a developer opening a portal for the first time
• an incident triage flow
• an AI agent that needs full context before suggesting any action

Portal context

The four most useful inventory entry points:

ldev portal inventory sites --json
ldev portal inventory pages --site /global --json
ldev portal inventory page --url /home --json
ldev portal inventory structures --site /global --with-templates --json
ldev portal inventory templates --site /global --json
ldev portal inventory where-used --type structure --key BASIC --site /global --json

Each one consolidates information that the Headless API only returns in fragments. Highlights:

• inventory sites — accessible sites with the identifiers needed for deeper inspection, optionally with content volume metrics
• inventory pages — full page hierarchy for a site, with friendly URLs
• inventory page — for a single URL, the resolved layout, fragments, widgets and journal articles in one structured response
• inventory structures --with-templates — structures enriched with their associated templates in one call, the right starting point for structure/template work
• inventory templates — template inventory when you already know the site and need template-specific identifiers
• inventory where-used — impact analysis for a known fragment, widget, structure, template, or ADT before proposing a mutation

For structure/template incidents, prefer inventory structures --with-templates as the first step: it returns both in one call, so you can route directly to the matching resource export-* or resource import-* command.

When possible, add --site so the scan stays scoped to one Site instead of all accessible Sites.

Preflight: fail fast before long flows

ldev portal inventory preflight
ldev portal inventory preflight --force-refresh

Preflight checks that the API surfaces (admin Site, admin User, JSONWS) are reachable with the current OAuth credentials. The result is cached. Attach preflight as a pre-hook to any inventory or resource flow:

ldev portal inventory --preflight sites --json
ldev resource --preflight export-structures --all-sites

Runtime context

ldev context --json
ldev status --json
ldev doctor --json
ldev ai bootstrap --intent=discover --json

These tell you which repo and runtime ldev resolved, whether services are healthy, and which command areas are ready right now.

ldev context is the canonical offline snapshot — it does not contact Docker or the portal. ldev ai bootstrap --intent=discover wraps the same snapshot in the agent-facing shape; it is the standard entrypoint for agents.

Why discovery comes first

Most maintenance mistakes happen because someone changed the system before they understood it. Discovery first means:

1. you know which environment you are targeting
2. you know which portal object you are looking at
3. you know whether the problem is portal, runtime, data or OSGi related

It is also the cheapest way to give an agent enough context to do something useful without guessing.