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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsCLI tools should generally use both: an exit status for shell control flow and a diagnostic payload for the detail needed to understand a failure. Keep the status small and stable, make errors readable by default, and provide a predictable structured format for automation.
What each channel is for
Exit status: a compact signal for the shell
Every command has an exit status that can influence what other shell commands do, as POSIX.1-2024 puts it. Scripts can inspect that status to decide whether to continue, branch, retry, or stop without parsing a message. In common Unix practice, zero means success and nonzero means failure, although particular utilities can define more specific meanings for their statuses.
The status is deliberately limited: it tells a caller about the process outcome, not necessarily the domain reason. A nonzero value alone cannot explain whether a request failed because of invalid input, missing configuration, or a service problem.
Structured diagnostic: an explanation for people and programs
A structured diagnostic can carry a stable error code or kind, a concise message, and relevant context. AWS CLI illustrates the distinction: errors go to stderr, and JSON or YAML output can expose error fields such as Code and Message; some service errors may also include a modeled Type. This gives an automation consumer something more precise to inspect than prose alone.
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Structured does not have to mean human-hostile. A CLI can render a readable explanation for a person and expose a documented JSON or YAML representation when a caller requests it.
How the two approaches compare
| Criterion | Exit status | Structured diagnostic |
|---|---|---|
| Shell branching | Available directly to shell control flow. | Requires reading and parsing output. |
| Detail | Limited; specific meanings need documentation. | Can carry an error kind, message, and contextual fields. |
| Human readability | A bare number is not an explanation. | Can be rendered as readable text or represented as JSON/YAML, depending on mode. |
| Portability | Zero/nonzero conventions are widely used, while mappings for individual nonzero values vary. | Depends on a documented schema and selected format. |
| Compatibility risk | Changing a status meaning can break scripts. | Changing field names or document shape can break parsers. |
A practical design for CLI failures
1. Reserve zero for success
Return zero when the command succeeds and a nonzero status when it fails. POSIX.1-2024 specifies status 127 when a command is not found, 126 when it is found but not executable, and a value greater than 128 for termination by signal; signal identification is implementation-defined. These are shell and command-launch conventions, not a universal map for every application-level error.
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2. Keep the application status taxonomy small
Choose a small set of documented categories only when callers benefit from distinguishing common failures, such as usage errors, temporary failures, or configuration problems. The sysexits.h vocabulary offers examples: EX_USAGE is 64, EX_TEMPFAIL is 75, and EX_CONFIG is 78. These are conventions rather than a mandatory taxonomy, and the Linux man-pages project notes that choosing an appropriate value is often ambiguous.
Document each status you do use and tell consumers to handle unknown nonzero values as failures. Do not make scripts depend on undocumented distinctions.
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3. Put actionable detail in the diagnostic
Include a stable error kind or code, a concise explanation, and only the contextual fields that help the user or caller decide what to do next. Where appropriate, add a remediation hint. Keep the structured schema predictable: consumers should know which fields are stable and how optional fields behave.
4. Separate results from diagnostics where the contract allows
For commands that return data, keep normal results on stdout and diagnostics on stderr when that separation fits the command’s output contract. Specify what happens in structured mode: whether a failure document is emitted, which stream carries it, and how its presence relates to the nonzero status. AWS CLI documents errors on stderr, but the exact contract is a design choice each CLI needs to make explicit.
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5. Make machine-readable output an explicit, usable mode
Offer a readable interactive form and a predictable machine-readable format, such as JSON selected with --json or an equivalent option. The CLI Guidelines recommend human-readable output and machine-readable output where it does not harm usability; they specifically describe formatted JSON when --json is passed. Avoid forcing opaque JSON on every person at a terminal, and document the format and stream behavior for scripts.
6. Explain how status and payload relate
State whether the process status represents invocation success, whether a structured error may accompany a nonzero status, and what retry-related categories mean. Shopify CLI documentation, for example, treats the process exit code as the source of truth for success or failure while distinguishing execution-level failures from errors in a command’s own result schema. That is one implementation’s model, not a universal rule, but it shows why the boundary should be documented.
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What to document for consumers
- Which status means success and what documented nonzero categories mean.
- Whether unknown nonzero statuses should be treated as generic failure.
- Which stream carries normal results and which carries diagnostics in each output mode.
- Whether errors produce structured documents, and the stable fields and format version consumers can rely on.
- Whether a failure category is safe to retry, if the CLI can define that reliably.
Why neither channel is enough on its own
An exit status is efficient for shell branching but too compressed to diagnose most domain failures. A structured diagnostic provides richer context, but a script must capture and parse it, and its usefulness depends on a stable schema. Human-readable text remains valuable for interactive use, while explicit structured output gives automation a defined contract. Treating these as complementary channels avoids asking a bare integer to explain an error or asking every shell script to infer success from prose.
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