parse

parse <files…> reads one or more .feature files and emits a compact manifest an agent can reason over cheaply: per file the feature tags, scenario count, and section-comment count; per scenario the name, keyword, and tags. Detail (step text, step/example counts) is opt-in via --full.

gherkin-cli parse features/login.feature --tag @smoke

Flags

Flag	Description
--full	Include stepCount, exampleRows, and steps per scenario.
--tag <name>	Keep only scenarios carrying this tag.
--ast	Dump the raw cucumber GherkinDocument JSON (ignores projection).
--format <fmt>	Output format: toon (default) or json.

Behavior

• Default projection carries name, keyword, tags per scenario — a minimal schema so an agent spends few tokens on a suite it only needs to enumerate.
• A file that fails to parse yields an error {code, line, message} entry and does not fail the run — the batch still succeeds (exit 0). A missing file fails loud (ENOENT, exit 1).
• The result carries a summary aggregate (files, scenarios) so no follow-up call is needed to count.

See also

• validate — check well-formedness with a gating exit code.
• diff — classify scenario changes against a git ref.
• parse — the same projection as an imported function.
• AXI output contract — the shared conventions behind this output.