--output-format accepts csv, tabular and cypherl. None of them are meant for a program to read.
CSV is the closest, and it emits values like:
Anything consuming that has to unwrap nested quoting correctly just to get a field name. Easy to get slightly wrong, and there is no signal when you do — you get a different string and carry on.
Why it matters now
A growing share of mgconsole callers are programs rather than people: scripts, CI jobs, and AI agents generating and running Cypher. For them the current formats are a parsing exercise with no error path. A wrong parse produces a wrong answer, not a failure.
It also costs. Agents re-read and re-parse output, so a format that needs interpretation burns tokens on every call — real spend for anyone running agents at scale.
What we would like
An output format a program can consume without interpretation.
--output-formatacceptscsv,tabularandcypherl. None of them are meant for a program to read.CSV is the closest, and it emits values like:
Anything consuming that has to unwrap nested quoting correctly just to get a field name. Easy to get slightly wrong, and there is no signal when you do — you get a different string and carry on.
Why it matters now
A growing share of mgconsole callers are programs rather than people: scripts, CI jobs, and AI agents generating and running Cypher. For them the current formats are a parsing exercise with no error path. A wrong parse produces a wrong answer, not a failure.
It also costs. Agents re-read and re-parse output, so a format that needs interpretation burns tokens on every call — real spend for anyone running agents at scale.
What we would like
An output format a program can consume without interpretation.