Output Formats

Seven daft commands can emit machine-readable output via the shared --format flag: list, release-notes, hooks trust list, layout list, shared status, multi-remote status, and hooks run (when called without a specific hook).

Flags

• --format <FORMAT> — pick one of: json, ndjson, tsv, csv, yaml, toon, markdown. Mutually exclusive with --template.
• --template <STR> — render output with a Tera template. Mutually exclusive with --format.
• --no-headers — omit the header row in tsv / csv output. Ignored (with a warning) for other formats.

Per-command support

Not every format applies to every command. The supported sets:

Command	json	ndjson	tsv	csv	yaml	toon	markdown	template
list	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
hooks trust list	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
layout list	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
release-notes	✓	—	—	—	✓	✓	✓	✓
shared status	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
multi-remote status	✓	—	—	—	✓	✓	✓	✓
hooks run (listing)	✓	—	—	—	✓	✓	✓	✓

Requesting an unsupported combination prints a clear error listing the supported formats for that command and exits 2.

Formats

json

Pretty-printed JSON, two-space indent. Safe to pipe into jq. Use jq -c . for single-line output.

ndjson

One JSON object per line. Streams naturally into line processors like jq, fq, mlr, or awk. Tabular commands emit one row per line; matrix commands emit one object per populated cell in long form.

tsv

Tab-separated rows with a header row unless --no-headers is set. Cell values containing tabs or newlines are replaced with a single space before emission — TSV has no standard escaping, and preserving those bytes would break awk pipelines. If you need raw content, use csv or json.

csv

RFC 4180 CSV. Fields with commas, quotes, or newlines are double-quoted; quotes inside a field are escaped by doubling.

yaml

YAML 1.2. Preserves nested structure; good for configs and human reading.

toon

TOON — token-efficient structured data, designed for piping into LLM context. Roughly 30-50% fewer tokens than equivalent JSON.

markdown

For tabular commands, a GitHub-flavored markdown table. For release-notes, the rendered prose notes (ready to paste into a GitHub release). For shared status, a wide-form pivot table for quick visual reading.

Templates

--template takes a Tera template string. Tera is a Jinja-inspired engine with good error messages and full control-flow.

Context

• For list, hooks trust list, layout list, shared status — the template context exposes items as the array of rows.
• For release-notes, the context is the top-level document fields as variables.
• For multi-remote status and hooks run (listing) — the context is each section name as a variable binding the section's data.

Examples

Print one branch per line from daft list:

daft list --template '{% for r in items %}{{ r.name }}
{% endfor %}'

Custom summary:

daft list --template '{{ items | length }} worktrees'

Release titles only:

daft release-notes --template '{% for r in releases %}{{ r.version }}
{% endfor %}'

Syntax errors in your template print a line-and-column pointer to stderr and exit 2.

Errors

error: 'release-notes' does not support --format tsv
  supported formats: json, yaml, toon, markdown

error: invalid value 'bogus' for '--format <FORMAT>'
  [possible values: json, ndjson, tsv, csv, yaml, toon, markdown]

error: the argument '--format <FORMAT>' cannot be used with '--template <STR>'