CLI Getting Started Guide

ed guide

Prints the built-in manual, the same text the app ships to explain itself.

ed guide [<topic>] [--json]

Arguments

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
<topic>	agent, case-insensitive	none, meaning the full manual	Which text to print

Options

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
--json	flag	off	Emit the complete command, alias, argument, option and help catalog as JSON

The full manual and the agent topic are static prose. --json emits the parser catalog with serializationVersion, the root command, every nested subcommand, aliases, positional arguments, flags, options, accepted values, defaults and help text. It is the noninteractive discovery path for automation. All three forms need neither the app, the network, a machine, nor a repository.

Examples

ed guide
ed guide agent
ed guide --json | jq '.command.subcommands[] | {name: .commandName, aliases}'
ed guide | less

ed guide agent prints a section you can paste into a repository instruction file so an agent working there knows ed exists, can discover the complete parser tree, can use structured output where advertised, and can inspect, set up, verify, and recover all seventeen extensions noninteractively.

Any topic other than agent exits 3 and lists the discovery forms:

$ ed guide nope
error: no guide topic named nope
hint: try `ed guide`, `ed guide agent`, or `ed guide --json`

Combining a topic with --json exits 2 with empty stdout because the structured catalog applies to the full command tree, not one prose topic.

Where to go next

• Getting started with ed, the rest of this group
• All ed commands