fix: suppress spinner output when --json or --silent flag is passed

[DavidWells]

Summary

• When --json or --silent is passed, startSpinner now returns a no-op spinner that satisfies the Spinner interface but writes nothing
• This matches the existing behavior of log() in command-helpers.ts, which already no-ops on --json and --silent

Problem

We hit this in CI where a script captures CLI output with 2>&1 (merging stderr into stdout) and pipes it to jq:

AGENT_OUTPUT=$(netlify agents:create "$TRIGGER_TEXT" --json 2>&1 || true)
AGENT_ID=$(echo "$AGENT_OUTPUT" | jq -r '.id // empty')

Even though nanospinner writes to stderr by default, the 2>&1 pulls spinner frames (⠋ Creating agent task...) into the captured output. jq then sees the spinner text before the JSON and fails to parse.

While the script could avoid 2>&1, when --json is passed the CLI should produce machine-friendly output only — no spinners, no decorative text, regardless of which stream they target.

Approach

Rather than adding if (!options.json) guards at every spinner call site, the suppression is handled centrally in startSpinner. When --json or --silent is detected in process.argv, it returns a no-op object implementing the full Spinner interface. This means:

• Zero changes needed at call sites — existing .stop(), .success(), .error() calls work as before
• Consistent with how log() already handles --json/--silent globally
• No risk of future commands forgetting the check

Test plan

• netlify agents:create "test" --json --agent claude outputs clean JSON with no spinner text on stderr
• netlify agents:create "test" --json --agent claude 2>&1 | jq -r '.id' parses successfully
• Interactive mode (no --json) still shows spinners as before
• npm run typecheck passes

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Spinner output is now properly suppressed when using the --json or --silent command-line flags, ensuring cleaner output in these modes.

Walkthrough

Runtime suppression logic was added to the spinner module to conditionally disable spinner output based on command-line arguments (--json, --silent). A noopSpinner object implementing the Spinner interface was introduced to serve as a no-op replacement. The startSpinner function signature was updated to return a Spinner type and now conditionally returns either the no-op spinner or a real spinner instance depending on whether output suppression is enabled.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 'fix: suppress spinner output when --json or --silent flag is passed' directly and clearly summarizes the main change in the changeset.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is well-related to the changeset, providing detailed context about the problem, the approach, and testing plan for suppressing spinner output.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

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✨ Finishing Touches

• 📝 Generate docstrings (stacked PR)
• 📝 Generate docstrings (commit on current branch)

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch DavidWells/agent-cmd-json-fix

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[github-actions]

📊 Benchmark results

Comparing with df4d195

• Dependency count: 1,081 (no change)
• Package size: 330 MB (no change)
• Number of ts-expect-error directives: 362 (no change)

[coderabbitai]

🧹 Nitpick comments (1)

src/lib/spinner.ts (1)

3-10: Avoid freezing CLI flags at import time.

Line [3] snapshots process.argv once. If argv is changed after module import (common in tests/programmatic usage), suppression can drift. Prefer reading argv inside shouldSuppressOutput().

♻️ Proposed tweak

-const argv = process.argv.slice(2)
-
-const shouldSuppressOutput = () => argv.includes('--json') || argv.includes('--silent')
+const shouldSuppressOutput = () => {
+  const argv = process.argv.slice(2)
+  return argv.includes('--json') || argv.includes('--silent')
+}

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

In `@src/lib/spinner.ts` around lines 3 - 10, The module currently snapshots
process.argv into the top-level const argv which freezes CLI flags at import
time; remove the top-level argv constant and modify shouldSuppressOutput() to
call process.argv.slice(2) inside the function and check .includes('--json') ||
.includes('--silent') so flags are read each time; keep DOTS_SPINNER unchanged
and only update shouldSuppressOutput (and remove references to the removed argv
symbol).

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

Nitpick comments:
In `@src/lib/spinner.ts`:
- Around line 3-10: The module currently snapshots process.argv into the
top-level const argv which freezes CLI flags at import time; remove the
top-level argv constant and modify shouldSuppressOutput() to call
process.argv.slice(2) inside the function and check .includes('--json') ||
.includes('--silent') so flags are read each time; keep DOTS_SPINNER unchanged
and only update shouldSuppressOutput (and remove references to the removed argv
symbol).

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ℹ️ Review info

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between b527545 and 2aa73e2.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• src/lib/spinner.ts

[jaredm563]

nice!