Scripting

JSON output

Commands are designed to be user friendly in an interactive terminal, and you can script them by passing --format json to commands that support JSON output. For example, here is but show on a commit.

$ but show 2672465

Commit:    26724656b8856871542da1e69c888b2e7330294a
Change-ID: pzyoupplvookqoqpussrpnnlrwqsnzkr
Author:    Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com>
Date:      2026-02-04 07:22:53 +0100 (3d ago)

hero update - new branding

Files changed:
  M app/models/user.rb
  M app/views/home/index.html.erb
  A test.md

Now with JSON output:

$ but show --format json 2672465 | jq

{
  "commit": "26724656b8856871542da1e69c888b2e7330294a",
  "author": {
    "name": "Scott Chacon",
    "email": "schacon@gmail.com"
  },
  "committer": {
    "name": "Scott Chacon",
    "email": "schacon@gmail.com"
  },
  "date": "2026-02-04 07:22:53 +0100",
  "message": "hero update - new branding\n",
  "files": [
    {
      "path": "app/models/user.rb",
      "status": "modified"
    },
    {
      "path": "app/views/home/index.html.erb",
      "status": "modified"
    },
    {
      "path": "test.md",
      "status": "added"
    }
  ],
  "changeId": "pzyoupplvookqoqpussrpnnlrwqsnzkr"
}

You can use --format json with commands that support formatted output, such as committing, status, and diffing, to get parseable data for scripts or agents.

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JSON output

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