Automation and agents

BaseHarbor keeps human CLI, JSON and MCP as separate interfaces over the same domain lifecycle.

Structured output

Commands that support machine-readable results use:

-o json
--output json

Global non-interactive behavior uses:

--no-input
--non-interactive

Automation must never depend on parsing decorative human output.

Agent interface

baha agent describe

Use agent description/discovery to inspect the supported semantic machine surface.

MCP

baha mcp serve

The MCP server uses stdio and exposes BaseHarbor semantic operations. It does not expose a generic shell or generic Docker/Podman execution.

Standalone serve

The root command tree also contains baha serve for the supported local service surface.

See MCP / agent interface and Machine Interface v1.

Example: inspect an application without terminal prompts

Inside an adopted or generated application repository:

baha --no-input app inspect . -o json > inspection.json
baha --no-input app plan -o json > plan.json
baha --no-input agent describe -o json > agent-tools.json

Parse these JSON documents in your automation, and check each command's exit status before using its output. --no-input fails with an actionable error when required decisions are missing; it does not silently approve mutation.

Example: launch the MCP server from a client

Use the standard local stdio server configuration in a client that supports this format, adapting the executable path to your installation:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "baseharbor": {
      "command": "baha",
      "args": ["mcp", "serve"]
    }
  }
}

The client launches baha and performs MCP initialization and tools/list. Discover the actual registered semantic tools before calling them. A CLI command name is not automatically an MCP tool name; complete CLI/JSON/MCP coverage is tracked for v0.4.22 in issue #787.