Scripting and Automation

nito ask and nito fusion print their answer to standard output and then exit, so they compose like any other Unix tool. This page covers the parts you need when Nito runs inside a script or pipeline rather than in front of a person.

Output Formats

Mode	Flag	What you get
Pretty	(default)	Colored, formatted output for reading in a terminal.
Quiet	`--quiet`	Only the answer or the value you asked for, nothing else.
JSON	`--json`	A structured object for a successful response, for machines to parse.
No color	`--no-color`	Plain text with no ANSI codes, for logs and files.

--quiet and --verbose are mutually exclusive. The NO_COLOR environment variable is honored, so NO_COLOR=1 nito ask ... also drops color.

# machine-readable, then pull one field
nito ask --json "Return three tags for this repo." | jq -r '.tags[]'

# just the answer, copied to the clipboard
nito ask --quiet "Write a one-line commit message for these changes." | pbcopy

--json structures a successful response. Errors always print as plain text to standard error and set a non-zero exit code, so a script can tell success from failure without parsing anything.

Exit Codes

Nito exits 0 on success and non-zero on failure. Branch on that directly:

if answer=$(nito ask --quiet "Is this diff safe to merge? Answer yes or no."); then
  echo "Nito said: $answer"
else
  echo "Nito call failed" >&2
  exit 1
fi

Progress indicators are written to standard error, and only when the output is an interactive terminal. So redirected output and pipelines stay clean, and capturing stdout never picks up a spinner.

Piping Input

--stdin reads the prompt from standard input. The piped text becomes the whole prompt, so you cannot also pass a prompt argument (Nito rejects that combination). To ask a question about piped content, put the question into the stream:

# combine your question and the content into one piped prompt
{ echo "What is the root cause of this error?"; cat error.log; } | nito ask --stdin

For files, prefer --file, which attaches an image or document without reshaping your prompt:

nito ask --file ./trace.txt "Summarize the failure in this trace."

Recipes

Shell script
Git hook
CI step

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail
msg=$(git diff --staged | { echo "Write a concise commit message for this diff:"; cat; } | nito ask --stdin --quiet)
echo "$msg"

# .git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg
#!/usr/bin/env bash
diff=$(git diff --staged)
[ -z "$diff" ] && exit 0
{ echo "Suggest a commit message for this diff:"; echo "$diff"; } \
  | nito ask --stdin --quiet >> "$1"

# fail the job if Nito flags the change
verdict=$(nito ask --quiet "Reply RISK or OK only. Any secrets in this diff? $(git diff --staged)")
[ "$verdict" = "OK" ] || { echo "Nito flagged a risk" >&2; exit 1; }

Privacy still applies in scripts exactly as it does in a chat. A scripted nito ask runs at the privacy level of the model it uses, and --json or --quiet change only the shape of the output, never where the request goes. See Privacy Levels.

Nito CLI

The full command surface and flags on one page.

Document Q&A Pipeline

A recipe using --json output and client-side validation over many files.

Basics

Sessions and Health

Advanced

Scripting and Automation

Output Formats

Exit Codes

Piping Input

Recipes

Nito CLI

Document Q&A Pipeline

​Output Formats

​Exit Codes

​Piping Input

​Recipes

​Related

Nito CLI

Document Q&A Pipeline

Output Formats

Exit Codes

Piping Input

Recipes

Related