CLI Tools Ls

`ed tools ls`

Lists the three tools with their state, version and reason.

Usage:

ed tools ls [--json]

Options:

Name	Type / values	Default	What it does
`--json`	flag	off	Emits one JSON document on stdout.

There are no positional arguments, and there is nothing to filter or sort by: the order is always yt-dlp, claude, codex.

--json shape, an array with one object per tool:

[
  {
    "id": "yt-dlp",
    "installed": true,
    "name": "yt-dlp",
    "path": "/Users/pulkit/Library/Application Support/Edith/bin/yt-dlp",
    "version": "2026.07.04",
    "why": "Downloads YouTube audio into your Music library."
  },
  {
    "id": "claude",
    "installed": true,
    "name": "Claude Code",
    "path": "/Users/pulkit/.local/bin/claude",
    "version": "2.1.226 (Claude Code)",
    "why": "Includes Claude Code cloud sessions in Agent Usage."
  },
  {
    "id": "codex",
    "installed": true,
    "name": "Codex",
    "path": "/Users/pulkit/.local/bin/codex",
    "version": "codex-cli 0.146.0-alpha.9.2",
    "why": "Reads Codex session and weekly limits when that provider is enabled."
  }
]

id is what install takes. name is the display name the Settings row shows, which differs from the id for two of the three. why is the sentence under that name in the same row. A tool that is not installed keeps every key and nulls the two that have no answer:

{
  "id": "yt-dlp",
  "installed": false,
  "name": "yt-dlp",
  "path": null,
  "version": null,
  "why": "Downloads YouTube audio into your Music library."
}

version is also null when the tool is installed but printed nothing on stdout for --version.

Examples:

ed tools ls
ed tools ls --json
ed tools ls --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.installed | not) | .id'

The table is four columns, and the last one is not padded:

$ ed tools ls
ID      STATE      VERSION                      WHY
yt-dlp  installed  2026.07.04                   Downloads YouTube audio into your Music library.
claude  installed  2.1.226 (Claude Code)        Includes Claude Code cloud sessions in Agent Usage.
codex   installed  codex-cli 0.146.0-alpha.9.2  Reads Codex session and weekly limits when that provider is enabled.

STATE is installed or missing, and a missing tool leaves VERSION blank rather than printing a placeholder:

$ ed tools ls
ID      STATE      VERSION                      WHY
yt-dlp  missing                                 Downloads YouTube audio into your Music library.
claude  installed  2.1.226 (Claude Code)        Includes Claude Code cloud sessions in Agent Usage.
codex   installed  codex-cli 0.146.0-alpha.9.2  Reads Codex session and weekly limits when that provider is enabled.

Behaviour: ls reads no settings, posts no notification and needs neither the main window nor the menu bar helper. It writes ~/Library/Application Support/Edith, which assembling the PATH creates when it is not already there, and tool-versions.json inside it, which is the version cache. The three tools are probed concurrently, one task each, and a tool with no cached version, or one whose cached stamp no longer matches the binary's size and modification time, is run once, with stdin on /dev/null and stderr discarded, and waited for, so a cold run is only as slow as the slowest --version on the machine and there is no timeout. A tool's exit status is ignored: presence is decided by the file being executable, and the version is whatever first line came back.

While it probes it says so. A single spinner line on stderr reads probing 3 tools, carries the seconds elapsed, is rewritten in place and is erased before the table lands, so it leaves nothing in the transcript. It is skipped entirely when stderr is not a terminal, when --json is passed, or when NO_COLOR is set or TERM is dumb: stdout is the same either way.