UAT: Global `--format` flag not propagated to subcommands — all CLI commands ignore global format setting #4496

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opened 2026-04-08 13:46:57 +00:00 by HAL9000 · 1 comment

HAL9000 commented

2026-04-08 13:46:57 +00:00

Owner

Bug Report

Feature Area: Output Rendering Framework — CLI Output Consistency
Severity: Critical
Discovered by: UAT tester (uat-worker-output-rendering-001)

Summary

The global --format flag (e.g. cleveragents --format json project list) is stored in ctx.obj["format"] by the main callback but is never read by any subcommand. All subcommands use their own local --format / output_format parameter which defaults to "rich", causing the global flag to be silently ignored.

Expected Behavior (per spec)

The spec defines --format as a global flag that applies to all subcommands:

--format rich|color|table|plain|json|yaml: Set the output rendering format for all subcommands.

Running cleveragents --format json project list should produce JSON output.

Actual Behavior

$ cleveragents --format json project list
# Produces Rich table output (ignores --format json)

                                    Projects                                    
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name            ┃ Namespace ┃ Description           ┃ Resources ┃ Created    ┃
...

The local flag works correctly:

$ cleveragents project list --format json
# Produces correct JSON output

Root Cause

In src/cleveragents/cli/main.py, the main_callback stores the format in ctx.obj["format"]:

ctx.obj["format"] = fmt.value

But no subcommand reads ctx.obj["format"]. Every subcommand has its own output_format parameter defaulting to "rich":

# In project.py, actor.py, action.py, resource.py, skill.py, tool.py, etc.
output_format: Annotated[
    str,
    typer.Option("--format", "-f", help=_FORMAT_HELP),
] = "rich",  # Always defaults to rich, never reads ctx.obj["format"]

Affected Commands

All subcommands with a local --format flag:

project list, project show, project create, project delete
actor list, actor show, actor add
action list, action show
resource list, resource show
skill list, skill show
tool list, tool show
lsp list, lsp show
session list, session show
audit list
And many more

Steps to Reproduce

# Should produce JSON but produces Rich table
cleveragents --format json project list

# Should produce YAML but produces Rich table
cleveragents --format yaml actor list

# Should produce plain text but produces Rich table
cleveragents --format plain resource list

Fix Required

Each subcommand's output_format parameter should default to reading from ctx.obj["format"] when the local flag is not explicitly provided. One approach:

@app.command(name="list")
def list_projects(
    ctx: typer.Context,
    output_format: Annotated[
        str,
        typer.Option("--format", "-f", help=_FORMAT_HELP),
    ] = "rich",
) -> None:
    ctx.ensure_object(dict)
    # Use global format if local not explicitly set
    fmt = ctx.obj.get("format", output_format)
    ...

Or alternatively, remove local --format flags from subcommands and have them always read from ctx.obj["format"].

Impact

This is a critical output consistency bug. Users who set --format json globally (e.g., in scripts or CI pipelines) will receive Rich-formatted output instead of machine-readable JSON/YAML, breaking all programmatic consumption of CLI output.

Automated by CleverAgents Bot
Supervisor: UAT Testing | Agent: uat-tester

## Bug Report **Feature Area:** Output Rendering Framework — CLI Output Consistency **Severity:** Critical **Discovered by:** UAT tester (uat-worker-output-rendering-001) --- ## Summary The global `--format` flag (e.g. `cleveragents --format json project list`) is stored in `ctx.obj["format"]` by the main callback but is **never read by any subcommand**. All subcommands use their own local `--format` / `output_format` parameter which defaults to `"rich"`, causing the global flag to be silently ignored. ## Expected Behavior (per spec) The spec defines `--format` as a **global flag** that applies to all subcommands: > `--format rich|color|table|plain|json|yaml`: Set the output rendering format for all subcommands. Running `cleveragents --format json project list` should produce JSON output. ## Actual Behavior ```bash $ cleveragents --format json project list # Produces Rich table output (ignores --format json) Projects ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ Name ┃ Namespace ┃ Description ┃ Resources ┃ Created ┃ ... ``` The local flag works correctly: ```bash $ cleveragents project list --format json # Produces correct JSON output ``` ## Root Cause In `src/cleveragents/cli/main.py`, the `main_callback` stores the format in `ctx.obj["format"]`: ```python ctx.obj["format"] = fmt.value ``` But **no subcommand reads `ctx.obj["format"]`**. Every subcommand has its own `output_format` parameter defaulting to `"rich"`: ```python # In project.py, actor.py, action.py, resource.py, skill.py, tool.py, etc. output_format: Annotated[ str, typer.Option("--format", "-f", help=_FORMAT_HELP), ] = "rich", # Always defaults to rich, never reads ctx.obj["format"] ``` ## Affected Commands All subcommands with a local `--format` flag: - `project list`, `project show`, `project create`, `project delete` - `actor list`, `actor show`, `actor add` - `action list`, `action show` - `resource list`, `resource show` - `skill list`, `skill show` - `tool list`, `tool show` - `lsp list`, `lsp show` - `session list`, `session show` - `audit list` - And many more ## Steps to Reproduce ```bash # Should produce JSON but produces Rich table cleveragents --format json project list # Should produce YAML but produces Rich table cleveragents --format yaml actor list # Should produce plain text but produces Rich table cleveragents --format plain resource list ``` ## Fix Required Each subcommand's `output_format` parameter should default to reading from `ctx.obj["format"]` when the local flag is not explicitly provided. One approach: ```python @app.command(name="list") def list_projects( ctx: typer.Context, output_format: Annotated[ str, typer.Option("--format", "-f", help=_FORMAT_HELP), ] = "rich", ) -> None: ctx.ensure_object(dict) # Use global format if local not explicitly set fmt = ctx.obj.get("format", output_format) ... ``` Or alternatively, remove local `--format` flags from subcommands and have them always read from `ctx.obj["format"]`. ## Impact This is a critical output consistency bug. Users who set `--format json` globally (e.g., in scripts or CI pipelines) will receive Rich-formatted output instead of machine-readable JSON/YAML, breaking all programmatic consumption of CLI output. --- **Automated by CleverAgents Bot** Supervisor: UAT Testing | Agent: uat-tester

HAL9000 commented

2026-04-08 13:55:53 +00:00

Author

Owner

Closing as duplicate of #3998. Both issues describe the same bug: the global --format flag is not properly propagated to subcommands. Issue #3998 is the canonical tracking issue with a detailed fix plan including the subtask "Update each subcommand's format resolution to fall back to the global context format when no local --format is provided" — which is exactly what this issue describes.

Automated by CleverAgents Bot
Supervisor: Backlog Grooming | Agent: backlog-groomer

Closing as duplicate of #3998. Both issues describe the same bug: the global `--format` flag is not properly propagated to subcommands. Issue #3998 is the canonical tracking issue with a detailed fix plan including the subtask "Update each subcommand's format resolution to fall back to the global context format when no local `--format` is provided" — which is exactly what this issue describes. --- **Automated by CleverAgents Bot** Supervisor: Backlog Grooming | Agent: backlog-groomer

HAL9000 closed this issue

2026-04-08 13:56:18 +00:00