Exit Codes & Output Streams

The CLI follows one contract everywhere:

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
1	Runtime failure — API error, network failure, missing credentials, partial batch failure
2	Usage error — invalid flag value, unparsable input file, missing required flag combination

Scripts can rely on 2 meaning "fix the invocation" and 1 meaning "fix the environment or retry".

stdout vs stderr

• stdout carries data only: pretty layouts and table, markdown, csv, json, or yaml payloads.
• stderr carries everything else: progress/status lines, rate-limit retry warnings, deprecation notices, and errors.

This means machine-readable output always pipes cleanly:

airs runtime profiles list --all --output json | jq '.[].profileName'
airs runtime bulk-scan --profile demo --file prompts.txt --output-file results.csv
# progress lines appear on the terminal (stderr) without corrupting the CSV

API errors include the HTTP status when available, plus a reminder that --debug captures the full (secret-redacted) request/response traffic.

Read-output formats

Every read command accepts the same six formats:

Format	Contract
pretty	Interactive, decorated terminal view
table	Stable column projection using box-drawing tables
markdown	Stable GitHub-flavored Markdown table
csv	Stable projection with RFC 4180 quoting
json	Complete normalized records; lists are bare arrays and details are objects
yaml	The same complete normalized shape as JSON

JSON and YAML intentionally contain more fields than the tabular projections. DLP wire responses are converted from snake_case to the CLI's camelCase structured boundary.

Output selection uses this precedence, from highest to lowest:

1. The read command's --output <format>.
2. The global airs --output <format> option.
3. defaultOutput in ~/.prisma-airs/config.json, including its PANW_CLI_OUTPUT environment mapping.
4. pretty.

Pagination and revisions

Paginated list commands expose --limit, --offset, and --all. --all walks the API pages rather than requesting an oversized page. Traversal stops at 10,000 records by default; pass --max <n> to choose another cap or --max 0 to remove it. Paging summaries and next-offset hints are stderr status, so redirected stdout stays valid.

Profiles and topics return only their latest revision by default. Their list commands accept --all-versions, and their detail commands accept --revision <n> or --all-versions for historical reads.

Confirmation prompts

Destructive commands (runtime profiles delete, runtime topics delete, runtime topics revert, redteam targets delete, runtime profiles cleanup) ask for interactive confirmation before deleting:

• Interactive terminal (TTY): a Y/N confirm prompt appears (default: No). Declining prints Aborted and exits 0 — a no-op, not a failure.
• --force: bypasses the prompt entirely (for profiles delete and topics delete, --force additionally performs the API force-delete and pairs with --updated-by).
• Non-interactive (no TTY, e.g. CI or piped): the command refuses without --force and exits 2 — a script must state destructive intent explicitly. Exception: profiles cleanup without --force stays a safe preview (exit 0) so agents and JSON consumers can inspect before deleting.