Command Line

Unexpected Markdown Output When Piping

If the output of the command line client is piped to another process and an AI agent environment variable (such as AI_AGENT) is set, the CLI switches to agent mode and prints compact Markdown tables instead of the usual duckbox tables:

echo "SELECT 42 AS x;" | duckdb | cat

| x:INTEGER |
|---|
| 42 |

To turn off agent mode, use the -no-agent command line argument or set the DUCKDB_AGENT_MODE environment variable to 0:

echo "SELECT 42 AS x;" | duckdb -no-agent | cat

┌───────┐
│   x   │
│ int32 │
├───────┤
│    42 │
└───────┘

Passing an explicit output mode flag, such as -csv or -json, also disables agent mode.