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Decide on a --json output escape hatch #35
Description
Discussion issue. The CLI is TOON-pure by design (~40% smaller than JSON), but script consumers sometimes want machine-readable output.
Decide:
- Stay TOON-only, or
- Add an explicitly non-default
--jsonescape hatch — and whether that should be decided at the AXI-spec level upstream (github.com/kunchenguid/axi) rather than per-CLI.
Activity
seraph-pixelperfect commentedon Aug 19, 2026
Input for the decision, from an automated implementation pass over v0.2/v0.3 (PRs #37–#50): every new surface shipped TOON-only with zero demand for JSON inside the CLI itself, and the test suite (now 265 tests) asserts TOON shapes throughout —
--fields(#23, PR #41) already provides the opt-in extensibility escape hatch agents actually needed (extra columns/rows), which was the main scenario motivating--json.\n\nRecommendation: keep the CLI TOON-only for now, and treat the machine-readable escape hatch as an AXI-spec-level decision (kunchenguid/axi) rather than a per-CLI one — per-CLI--jsonflags would fragment AXI consumers for one CLI's convenience. If the spec later adopts it, the natural implementation here is a global flag stripped inresolveGlobalFlags(src/config.ts, same seam as--key) with one renderer switch, not per-command plumbing.