Output formats

bee-check emits results in one of two formats, selected with --output.

--output text (default)

Human-readable, terminal-friendly. Roughly:

ref     c79394a6c311f816373ec9945365325e7fc0784cfa9a62deec1524d2c2bdc36a
status  Retrievable

vantages:
  http://localhost:1633     retrievable   312 ms  nb 71 PO 3
  https://b.example          retrievable   1102 ms nb 4a PO 0

gateways:
  https://api.gateway.ethswarm.org  retrievable   480 ms  HTTP 200

If --per-chunk was used, additional tables follow for chunk stats per vantage, per neighborhood, and (verbose mode) the full chunk matrix.

This format is for eyes, not scripts. It’s not stable across versions — the JSON format is.

--output json

Machine-readable, stable shape. Emits the full report as a JSON object matching spec_version: 1:

{
  "reference": "c79394a6c311f816373ec9945365325e7fc0784cfa9a62deec1524d2c2bdc36a",
  "status": "retrievable",
  "vantages": [
    {
      "bee_url": "http://localhost:1633",
      "retrievable": true,
      "elapsed_ms": 312,
      "overlay": "7179...6c9a",
      "bee_version": "2.7.2-rc1-868c1d52",
      "proximity_to_root": 3
    }
  ],
  "spec_version": 1
}

Canonical scripting pattern:

bee-check <ref> --output json | jq '.status'
bee-check <ref> --output json | jq '.vantages[] | select(.retrievable == false)'
bee-check <ref> --per-chunk --output json | jq '.chunk_stats.per_neighborhood'

The JSON output is also what bee-check-web consumes via drag-and- drop, so you can share a report file with a teammate who’ll then visualize it in the browser without re-running the probe.

Stability guarantees

• New fields may appear in any release without bumping spec_version. Consumers must ignore unknown fields.
• Renamed or removed fields bump spec_version.
• The text format has no stability guarantee — don’t grep it for scripting. Use --output json.