fix(cli): suppress progress bars when not TTY#230
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When stdout/stderr is not a terminal (e.g., captured by a parent process), OSC 9;4 progress sequences and carriage-return-based status lines produce massive output (247K chars for a typical update). This caused OpenClaw's qmd update to fail with 'too much output' errors, retrying ~24 times per 10 minutes. Gate all progress output on process.stderr.isTTY. Summary lines still print normally.
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jaylfc
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Apr 5, 2026
…ess-guard fix(cli): suppress progress bars when not TTY
jaylfc
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Apr 5, 2026
…ess-guard fix(cli): suppress progress bars when not TTY
tanarchytan
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Apr 8, 2026
…guard fix(cli): suppress progress bars when not TTY
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Problem
When
qmd updateorqmd embedruns inside a parent process (CI, cron, daemon, MCP server, editor plugin), the captured output is ~247K chars for a typical index with ~1600 documents. This is because:\x1b]9;4;1;N\x07) are written unconditionally to stderr\rIndexing: X/Y ETA: Zs) accumulate instead of overwriting (no terminal to interpret\r)This causes issues for any integration that captures output — in our case, OpenClaw's
qmd updatewas failing with "too much output" errors, retrying ~24 times per 10 minutes.Fix
Gate all progress/status output on
process.stderr.isTTY. Summary lines (Indexed: N new, M updated...) still print normally — only the ephemeral progress indicators are suppressed.Before (non-TTY): 247,296 chars
After (non-TTY): 6,639 chars
Changes
const isTTY = process.stderr.isTTYif (isTTY)\rIndexing: X/Yline inif (isTTY)if (isTTY)Minimal, no behavior change when running interactively.