The CLI said what it found by printing it: run() called ctx.ui.show(<a table>)
and handed back a ToolResult carrying only bookkeeping. By the time the boundary
saw that result the contacts had gone down the pipe already rendered, and there
was nothing left to offer a second format — which is exactly why --json reached
two commands out of twenty and stopped, each one growing an `if ctx.json_output:`
branch above the rendering that restated the whole answer in a dialect nobody
else could reuse.
exit_code has always worked the other way round: the tool states it, the boundary
turns it into a process status, and no tool calls sys.exit. The answer now travels
the same way. A tool states a Report; a renderer turns it into bytes; --json picks
the renderer.
ui/report.py holds the model — a Listing of records or a set of Facts, whose rows
carry the typed value and whose columns carry both projections of it. ui/fields.py
is the shared shapes, one constructor per concept, so every listing that mentions
a node speaks the same five-key object by construction rather than by review.
ui/renderers.py is the two faces: aligned text for a person, and the bare document
for a program — an array for a listing, an object for a set of facts, no envelope,
because the report a caller needs is still $?.
Nothing is migrated yet: report defaults to None and every command renders exactly
as it did. The script vocabulary the plain face will need lands alongside — ages,
durations, locations, the arrow-drawn route, the comma-joined spec, pinned lanes
for a live stream, and a wrap for the written pages — with the quoting still in
place until its callers move off it.
Also here, because the field library needs it: cli_time_format, the preference that
says whether the command line prints ages or timestamps, with --absolute as its
per-run override rather than a second switch beside it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Jean-Pierre MartineauandClaude Opus 5
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