Pick the right output format for humans, scripts, spreadsheets, and AI agents.
Several SonarQube CLI commands can output their results in different formats. Pick the one that matches what's consuming the output.
json
Scripts, dashboards, downstream tools.
A JSON array or object. Default for sonar list issues; the only output of sonar list projects.
table
Reading in your terminal.
A human-friendly aligned table. Adds no headers or borders that would break copy/paste.
csv
Spreadsheets, BI tools, archives.
Comma-separated values with a header row.
toon
AI coding agents and LLM consumption.
Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON), a token-efficient, LLM-friendly serialization. Use it when piping data into Claude or Copilot.
text
Default for analysis commands.
Native human-readable output. Used by sonar analyze and sonar analyze agentic.
sonar list issues
json, toon, table, csv
json
sonar list projects
json (only)
json
sonar analyze / analyze agentic
text, json
text
sonar analyze secrets
(no --format; text only)
-
sonar remediate
(no --format; interactive)
-
sonar api
Raw response body
-
sonar system status
json (via --json)
text
You're a person reading the output. Use table for list commands, or stick with the default text for analysis.
You're a script. Use json. It's stable, structured, and widely supported.
You're piping into a spreadsheet or BI tool. Use csv.
You're piping into an AI agent (Claude Code, Copilot, etc.). Use toon. It packs the same information into far fewer tokens than JSON, letting the agent see more of the data inside its context window.
Human-readable issues list:
Pipe issues into jq:
Export issues to a spreadsheet:
Feed issues to an AI agent:
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sonar list issues -p my-project --format tablesonar list issues -p my-project --format json | jq '.issues[] | select(.severity=="BLOCKER")'sonar list issues -p my-project --format csv > issues.csvsonar list issues -p my-project --format toon