Reverse-Sync a Questionnaire

Not an engineer?

If you need to get your Strapi changes live, follow Request a Content Sync instead. This page is for engineers running the sync commands.

Reverse sync reads a local generated TypeScript file and pushes the data back to Strapi, creating a new draft version. Use this when you have made local edits that need to be reflected in the CMS.

Steps

1. Dry run first

Always preview what will change before pushing:

yarn reverse-sync:questionnaire -q <slug> --dry-run

This shows a colored diff of what would change in Strapi — additions in green, deletions in red. No changes are made.

2. Review the diff

Check for:

• Expected changes (the edits you made)
• Unexpected changes (formatting differences, field ordering)
• Missing data (questions or rules that should not be removed)

3. Push to Strapi

yarn reverse-sync:questionnaire -q <slug>

This creates a draft in Strapi with your local changes. The published version remains unchanged.

4. Verify in Strapi

1. Open the questionnaire in Strapi admin
2. You should see it has a draft with your changes
3. Preview the draft to verify it works correctly

Flags

Flag	Long form	Type	Default	Required	Description
-q	--slug	string	–	Yes	Questionnaire slug to reverse-sync
-t	--target	enum	staging	No	Target environment: prod, staging, dev
–	--dependent	boolean	false	No	Only sync the dependent variant (file under dependents/)
–	--main-only	boolean	false	No	Only sync the main (non-dependent) variant; skips dependents/, claims/, etc.
–	--dry-run	boolean	false	No	Show the diff without pushing changes to Strapi
–	--force	boolean	false	No	Skip the confirmation prompt

--dependent and --main-only are mutually exclusive.

Examples

Push to production with confirmation skip:

yarn reverse-sync:questionnaire -q household -t prod --force

Sync only the dependent variant:

yarn reverse-sync:questionnaire -q household --dependent

Caution

Reverse sync creates a draft – it does not publish. You must promote separately to make the changes live in Strapi’s published version.

Troubleshooting

Issue	Cause	Fix
“Relation not found” warnings	Expected when quote-page or option-list components do not exist on the target environment	Link missing relations manually in the Strapi questionnaire editor after the draft is created
Diff shows unexpected changes	Someone else modified the questionnaire in Strapi since your last sync	Re-run a forward sync first (yarn sync:questionnaire -q <slug>) to update your local file, then re-apply your changes
“Cannot push to production” or wrong target	Target environment not specified or defaulting to staging	Use -t prod explicitly to target production
“Questionnaire file not found for slug”	Local file does not exist for the given slug	Verify the slug matches a file in src/syncedData/questionnaires/ (check subdirectories too)

See also

• Sync Commands Reference – full CLI reference for reverse-sync flags
• Promote a Questionnaire – next step after reverse-syncing
• Strapi Transform Pipeline – how the reverse transform maps canonical format back to Strapi