Introduces a unified robot mode that enables JSON output across all
commands, designed for AI agent and script consumption.
Robot mode activation (any of):
- --robot flag: Explicit opt-in
- GI_ROBOT=1 env var: For persistent configuration
- Non-TTY stdout: Auto-detect when piped (e.g., gi list issues | jq)
Implementation:
- Cli::is_robot_mode(): Centralized detection logic
- All command handlers receive robot_mode boolean
- Errors emit structured JSON to stderr with exit codes
- Success responses emit JSON to stdout
Behavior changes in robot mode:
- No color/emoji output (no ANSI escapes)
- No progress spinners or interactive prompts
- Timestamps as ISO 8601 strings (not relative "2 hours ago")
- Full content (no truncation of descriptions/notes)
- Structured error objects with code, message, suggestion
This enables reliable parsing by Claude Code, shell scripts, and
automation pipelines. The auto-detect on non-TTY means simple piping
"just works" without explicit flags.
Per-command --json flags remain for explicit control and override
robot mode when needed for human-friendly terminal + JSON file output.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>