Output formats

The global -o/--output flag takes text, json, yaml, or markdown. Each command chooses its own default and decides which values it supports. A value a command does not support is not an error: the command falls back to the output shown in the table below. Add -q when a script parses the result, so that progress lines do not mix with it. kix plan sends its progress lines to stderr for every format except text.

This page is hand-maintained. Check the output_format and global.output reads in cli/kix-cli/src/commands/ when in doubt.

Commands that honour -o

Command	Default	text	json	yaml	markdown
build	yaml	YAML	JSON	YAML	YAML
diff	text	Text	Plan document as JSON	Plan document as YAML	Markdown for pull request comments
plan, deploy --dry-run	text	Text	Plan document as JSON	Plan document as YAML	Markdown for pull request comments
check	text	Text	JSON	YAML	Text
list clusters, list packages	text	Text	JSON	YAML	Text
graph	text (tree)	Tree	JSON	YAML	Tree
inspect	text	Text	JSON	YAML	Text
status	text	Table	JSON	YAML	Table
rollback --list	text	Text	JSON	YAML	Text
images	text	One image per line	JSON	YAML	Text
drift	text	Text	JSON	Text	Text
pin set, pin check, pin list	text	Text	JSON	Text	Text
compliance sbom, compliance attest	json	JSON	JSON	YAML	JSON

Command-specific flags take priority over -o:

• kix check --sarif prints SARIF 2.1.0 whatever -o says.
• kix graph --format tree|dot|json overrides -o; dot is only available through --format.

Commands that ignore -o

Command	Output
deploy (without --dry-run)	A deploy event stream selected by --log-format pretty|line|json. See kix deploy.
rollback (without --list), gc, migrate domain	Plan, prompt, and progress text
health	Text
export, snapshot save, compliance audit	Files in a directory
logs, pf	kubectl’s own output
completions	A shell script

Colour

Text output is coloured when stdout is a terminal. --no-color, a set NO_COLOR, or TERM=dumb turns it off. JSON and YAML output are never coloured. Deploy and gc progress lines currently still contain terminal clear-line control sequences with --no-color; redirecting stderr may therefore preserve those sequences.

Reference

See kix plan for the Plan document that kix plan and kix diff print as JSON and YAML, and kix diff for the values a read-only comparison fills in.

Use it in a task

See Generate PR-review markdown from kix diff for the Markdown format in CI.