Output And Scripting

Gitquarry is designed to behave cleanly in pipelines. The main rule is simple:

structured data goes to stdout
progress and errors go to stderr

Output Formats

Supported formats:

pretty
json
toon
compact
csv

`pretty`

Human-first terminal output. Use it when reading results directly in a shell:

gitquarry search --format pretty "rust cli"

`json`

Pretty-printed structured output for tools and scripts:

gitquarry search --format json "rust cli"
gitquarry inspect rust-lang/rust --format json

`toon`

Token-efficient structured output for LLM context:

gitquarry search --format toon "rust cli"
gitquarry inspect rust-lang/rust --format toon

`compact`

Minified JSON for pipelines or logs:

gitquarry search --format compact "rust cli"

`csv`

Flat export-friendly output:

gitquarry search --format csv "rust cli"
gitquarry inspect rust-lang/rust --format csv

Progress Behavior

Progress is controlled by:

--progress auto|on|off

Rules:

auto is the default
in auto, gitquarry only prints progress when stderr is a TTY
progress never goes to stdout

That means this is safe:

gitquarry search "rust cli" --format json | jq '.items[0].full_name'

JSON Examples

Search pipeline:

gitquarry search "rust cli" --format json | jq '.items[].full_name'

Compact pipeline:

gitquarry search "release automation" --mode discover --format compact | jq '.total_count'

Inspect pipeline:

gitquarry inspect rust-lang/rust --readme --format json | jq '.repository.latest_release.tag_name'

CSV Examples

Export search results:

gitquarry search "vector database" --format csv > repos.csv

Export one inspected repository:

gitquarry inspect rust-lang/rust --format csv > repo.csv

CI-Friendly Usage

For deterministic CI or agent runs:

prefer json or compact
set --progress off if you want no progress noise at all
isolate config state with GITQUARRY_CONFIG_DIR
prefer env tokens over writing credentials into shared state

Example:

GITQUARRY_CONFIG_DIR="$(mktemp -d)" \
GITQUARRY_TOKEN="$GITHUB_TOKEN" \
gitquarry search "rust cli" --format compact --progress off

Error Handling

Errors are:

plain text
prefixed with a symbolic code
written to stderr
returned with exit code 1

Examples:

E_QUERY_REQUIRED: empty query is invalid outside explicit discovery mode
E_FLAG_REQUIRES_MODE: --rank blended requires --mode discover
E_FLAG_CONFLICT: raw query qualifier language: conflicts with overlapping structured flags

See error reference for the code list.

Getting Started

Search Workflow

Operations

Output And Scripting

Output And Scripting

Output Formats

`pretty`

`json`

`toon`

`compact`

`csv`

Progress Behavior

JSON Examples

CSV Examples

CI-Friendly Usage

Error Handling

​Output And Scripting

​Output Formats

​pretty

​json

​toon

​compact

​csv

​Progress Behavior

​JSON Examples

​CSV Examples

​CI-Friendly Usage

​Error Handling

Output And Scripting

Output Formats

`pretty`

`json`

`toon`

`compact`

`csv`

Progress Behavior

JSON Examples

CSV Examples

CI-Friendly Usage

Error Handling