cartoon

Token-optimized output for any CLI. Prefix cartoon onto a command and its output becomes TOON — a compact structured format built for LLM agents. Same exit codes, same behavior, ~70%+ fewer tokens on test runs.

This package installs the cartoon binary (prebuilt per platform via optionalDependencies — no Rust toolchain needed).

npm install -g cartoon-wrap

Use

cartoon pytest                 # asymmetric test report in TOON
cartoon npx jest src/          # same for jest
cartoon python -m unittest     # same for unittest
cartoon aws ec2 describe-instances --output json   # any JSON CLI → TOON
cartoon --fast pytest          # opt-in: parallel via pytest-xdist
cartoon stats --since 7d       # how many tokens you've saved
cartoon logs --last --stdout   # full raw output of the newest run

Failing test run, before (~4800 tokens) vs after (~300 tokens):

runner: pytest
summary:
  total: 48
  passed: 45
  failed: 2
  skipped: 1
  duration_s: 3.2
failures[2]{id,loc,msg}:
  "tests/test_auth.py::test_expiry","tests/test_auth.py:42",assert exp < now
  "tests/test_user.py::test_create","tests/test_user.py:88","KeyError: 'email'"

Guarantees

• Exit codes always mirrored — cartoon pytest && deploy behaves like pytest && deploy.
• If parsing fails, the original output passes through untouched.
• A transform must pay for itself (tokens counted, footer included) or the original is emitted byte-identically.
• Every run's full raw output is archived locally and linked via a raw_log: footer — nothing is ever lost.

For coding agents

Teach Claude Code, Codex, Cursor & co. to wrap commands automatically — skills and a Claude Code plugin ship in the repo: github.com/abhijitbansal/cartoon.

Full documentation: github.com/abhijitbansal/cartoon

MIT