> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://kestrel.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# JSON pipelines

> Use Kestrel Search safely from agents, shell pipelines, and scripts.

# JSON pipelines

Use `--output json` whenever another program will consume the results.

## Keep stdout machine-readable

```bash theme={null}
kestrelsearch search "Python security releases" \
  --output json > results.json
```

Search, fetch, and ranking progress is written to stderr, so redirecting stdout
does not mix diagnostics into the JSON document.

To suppress progress messages as well:

```bash theme={null}
kestrelsearch search "Python security releases" \
  --output json 2>/dev/null > results.json
```

## Select fields with jq

```bash theme={null}
kestrelsearch search "Python security releases" --output json \
  | jq '.[] | {title, url, bm25_score}'
```

## Reduce downstream context

Limit both the result count and extracted text when sending results to a model:

```bash theme={null}
kestrelsearch search "Python security releases" \
  --top-k 3 \
  --content-limit 1200 \
  --output json
```

## Handle empty results

An empty successful search emits an empty JSON array and exits successfully:

```json theme={null}
[]
```

A failure of every requested search exits with status 1 and writes the error to
stderr. Partial successes in fanout mode are retained.

See the [output schema](/reference/output-schema) for field definitions.