First off, to start the CLI, type:
$ monero-wallet-cli
If there's no wallet file in the current directory it will be created for you on startup, otherwise you'll need to choose a wallet name and one will be created for you.
Important: Monero wallets consist of two files, a wallet file and a keys file. For example if your wallet is called my-wallet
, the files will be my-wallet
(wallet data file) and my-wallet.keys
(key file). Both of these files are needed.
Once in the wallet REPL, the following commands are available:
[wallet]: password
[wallet]: balance