Output Formats

Every Deslop run emits three reports. The JSON is the product; the text and HTML are renderers over the same data. No claim appears in TXT or HTML that is not also present in the JSON.

JSON — canonical

deslop-report.json is what agents read and what schema consumers should parse.

{
  "tool_version": "0.0.0-dev",
  "schema_doc": "…",
  "metrics": {
    "analysed_loc": 1832044,
    "duplicated_loc": 48120,
    "duplication_percent": 2.63,
    "clusters_total": 142,
    "duplicated_files": 318,
    "threshold": { "…": "--fail-over verdict" }
  },
  "clusters": [ { "…": "see AI Integration" } ]
}

Guarantees

Fields marked optional in the schema may be absent. Fields marked required are always present.
Clusters are sorted by weight descending. clusters[0] is always the worst offender.
UTF-8. No BOM. LF line endings.

TXT — terminal

deslop-report.txt is ASCII, line-oriented, and deliberately boring. No ANSI colors, no unicode box-drawing, no paging escape codes. Pipeable into head, grep, awk without surprises.

deslop 0.0.0-dev -- 840 file(s), 142 cluster(s), 0 hidden
repo: 2.6% duplicated (48120 / 1832044 LOC, 142 clusters across 318 files)
embeddings: off
-- action hints --
  [identical] Extract the shared code into one definition and call it from every duplicate site.
#1 [0362505641efe3c7] weight=1252.80 size=3 nodes=58
  3 near-identical copies — safe to extract.
  :: Nearly identical across UserRepository.cs, ProductRepository.cs, OrderRepository.cs.

Each cluster is a numbered block — #1 is the worst offender — with its weight, size, and node count, followed by a plain-English summary and a one-line interpretation. Clusters are listed worst-first. This format survives every terminal, every SSH session, and every CI log.

HTML — portable

deslop-report.html is a single file. All CSS is inlined. No network requests. Drop it into a CI artifact, email it, open it on an airplane — it renders.

The HTML renderer uses the same ranking and the same cluster summaries as JSON and TXT. It adds:

syntax-highlighted example snippets, with long snippets and extra locations folded into collapsible toggles
an "AI match" badge and an impact chip on each duplicate group
a per-group signals table (structural / token / embedding / fused) in a collapsible "Run details" footer

It does not add: scores not in the JSON, commentary beyond the summary field, or links to external services.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	Completed. Duplication was below the `--fail-over` threshold, or no threshold was set.
`1`	Runtime error — nonexistent scan path, analysis failure, I/O error, or a `required` embedding provider that was unreachable. Never a panic.
`2`	Usage error — unknown flag or an invalid argument value, rejected before the run starts.
`3`	Duplication percentage exceeded the `--fail-over` gate.

deslop never panics on user input. Failures surface through these exit codes and a structured error on stderr.

Exit 3 is the CI gate. It only ever fires when you opt in — by passing a --fail-over percentage or setting [threshold] max_duplication_percent in .deslop.toml. See Gate CI on a duplication threshold for the walkthrough, or For AI for a ready-to-paste GitHub Actions job.

Logging vs. reports

By default, diagnostics go to a timestamped log file (deslop-<timestamp>.log) via tracing with structured fields; pass --log-to-console to send them to stderr instead. The human-readable preamble and summary always go to stderr. The reports themselves are written to files — deslop-report.json/.txt/.html by default, or the prefix you pass to --output. To emit only the JSON report, suppress the other two formats:

deslop . --notext --nohtml      # writes deslop-report.json