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mehen emits structured output in formats appropriate to each command’s role.

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Format matrix

Formatmehen metricsmehen diffmehen top-offenders
json✓ (default)✓✓
markdown✓✓ (GitHub-flavored)✓ (default)
yaml✓——
toml✓——

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Choosing a format

  • json — canonical machine shape. Use it when piping into a CI script or jq.
  • markdown — for mehen diff, this is GitHub-flavored Markdown for the sticky comment posted by the GitHub Action. For mehen metrics and mehen top-offenders, it’s a human-friendly summary.
  • yaml / toml — convenient for committing to a repo or piping into config-aware tooling. Available on mehen metrics only.

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JSON shape (mehen metrics)

{
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "tool": "mehen",
  "path": "src/main.py",
  "language": "python",
  "analysis_backend": "python-ruff",
  "diagnostics": [],
  "metrics": {
    "cyclomatic": 4,
    "cognitive": 6,
    "loc": { "sloc": 78, "ploc": 64, "lloc": 41, "cloc": 9, "blank": 5 },
    "halstead": { "volume": 412.0, "difficulty": 7.5, "effort": 3090.0 }
  },
  "spaces": []
}
contributions is omitted when the selected profile disables evidence or the analyzer has none. Entries are deterministically ordered by source span. amount is the signed, weighted number of points the source construct contributes to metric. For example, a SQL DROP contribution is: 
{
  "metric": "sql.change_risk_score",
  "span": { "start_byte": 0, "end_byte": 12, "start_line": 1, "end_line": 1 },
  "amount": 8.0,
  "reason": "sql.change_risk.drop"
}
Markdown files emit a top-level markdown: block with the documentation suite.

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JSON shape (mehen diff)

{
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "base": "main",
  "head": "HEAD",
  "files": [
    {
      "path": "src/main.py",
      "old": { "cyclomatic": 4, "cognitive": 6 },
      "new": { "cyclomatic": 5, "cognitive": 9 },
      "deltas": { "cyclomatic": { "delta": 1 }, "cognitive": { "delta": 3 } }
    }
  ],
  "markdown_files": [],
  "analysis_errors": [],
  "threshold_violations": []
}
The GitHub Action consumes JSON for decisions and the Markdown shape for the comment body.

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Pretty-printing

mehen metrics --pretty indents JSON output. The other commands always emit single-pass output for deterministic piping.

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See also