Output formats

Every list command in the fleet renders through one formatter, so the same flags work everywhere. Wire your commands through it as you add them, and this page describes what users get. Pick a format with -o, or let lobsters choose: a table when writing to a terminal, JSONL when piped.

Formats

lobsters <command> -o table   # aligned columns for reading
lobsters <command> -o jsonl   # one JSON object per line, for piping
lobsters <command> -o json    # a single JSON array
lobsters <command> -o csv     # spreadsheet friendly
lobsters <command> -o tsv     # tab-separated
lobsters <command> -o url     # just the URL column
lobsters <command> -o raw     # the underlying bytes, unformatted

Format	Best for
table	Reading on a terminal
jsonl	Piping into another tool, one object at a time
json	Loading a whole result as an array
csv / tsv	Spreadsheets and quick column math
url	Feeding URLs into other commands
raw	The unformatted bytes (response bodies, file contents)

Narrowing columns

Keep only the fields you want:

lobsters <command> --fields id,title,url

--no-header drops the header row in table and csv output, which helps when a downstream tool expects bare rows.

Templating rows

For full control over each line, apply a Go text/template. Fields are the JSON keys, capitalised:

lobsters <command> --template '{{.URL}} {{.Title}}'

Why auto-detection helps

Because the default adapts to the destination, the same command reads well by hand and parses cleanly in a pipe:

lobsters <command>            # a table, because this is a terminal
lobsters <command> | wc -l    # JSONL, because this is a pipe

You only reach for -o when you want something other than that default.