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Integrating with Your Tools

The CLI is built to slot into whatever you’re already using — not to be its own island. A few ways people plug it into their existing setup.

Scriptable output

Every command supports --json, which gives you raw, structured output instead of the formatted table:

yherda ideas list --json
yherda expression print 4 --json

That makes it straightforward to pipe Yherda data into other tools — feed it to jq, write a small script that backs up your expressions on a schedule, or generate a status report across all your active projects.

yherda projects list --json | jq '.[] | select(.status == "active")'

Editor and build integration

Because every command is a normal CLI invocation with predictable exit codes, you can wire it into:

A build step that exports your manuscript every time you push to a branch
An editor task/keybinding that runs yherda expression print against your current draft
A pre-commit hook that backs up an idea document before you touch it

There’s nothing special required on Yherda’s end — it’s the same interface you’d use by hand, just called from somewhere else.

Reading from stdin and files

Commands that take longer text content — like idea documents — read from a file or from stdin, so they compose naturally with whatever’s already producing that text:

yherda doc create --idea 42 --title "Outline" --file outline.md
pandoc outline.docx -t markdown | yherda doc create --idea 42 --title "Outline"

Non-interactive by design

login is the one command that needs a browser. Everything else runs entirely from flags and stored context, with no interactive prompts — which is what makes it safe to drop into a script or automation in the first place.

A small note for the curious: because every command is scriptable with consistent --json output and clean exit codes, the CLI also happens to work well as an integration point for AI coding agents that want to read or modify your project directly. That’s a side effect of building a good CLI, not the point of it — but if that’s relevant to your workflow, it’s there.