Commands overview

The mehen CLI has a small, focused command surface designed for CI runs, pre-PR hooks, and pull request automation.

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Commands

mehen --version --json is the fourth supported invocation — it emits a machine-readable shape that the GitHub Action reads to stamp its sticky comment footer.

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Why three commands

Each command matches one consumption pattern:

• metrics → “tell me about this one file” — single-file IDE/CI hooks, code-review screencasts.
• diff → “what changed on this PR” — the engine behind the GitHub Action sticky comment.
• top-offenders → “where are the hottest files?” — repository scans for prioritization dashboards.

AST inspection for maintainers lives in cargo xtask rather than the public CLI — see Developers → Add a new language.

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Output formats

All three commands accept a small format set. See Concepts → Output formats for the schema of each.

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Profiles

mehen metrics accepts a built-in --profile flag: default, ci, or strict. Profiles tune the metric selector set and the threshold suggestions.

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See also

• GitHub Action — production consumer of mehen diff.
• Concepts → Architecture — how each command flows through the engine.
• Concepts → Thresholds and diffs — --fail-on and threshold inputs.