The AWS CDK Toolkit, the CLI command cdk, is the primary tool for interacting with your AWS CDK app. It executes your app, interrogates the application model you defined, and produces and deploys the AWS CloudFormation templates generated by the AWS CDK. It also provides other features useful for creating and working with AWS CDK projects. This topic contains information about common use cases of the CDK Toolkit.

The AWS CDK Toolkit is installed with the Node Package Manager. In most cases, we recommend installing it globally.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/v2/guide/cli.html