Install headson with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository

Commands and aliases

• hson

Project history

The GitHub repository was created in October 2025. The README frames the project as a structure-aware alternative to head and tail for JSON and YAML, later extended to text and source-code summaries.

Early releases moved quickly through core CLI capabilities: multiple input files, global character limits, tail sampling, color output, YAML loading, auto format detection, grep-like inclusion, tree-style multi-file previews, and source-code heuristics. The release log shows the project settling on `headson` as the package name and `hson` as the installed command.

Adoption history

Public adoption evidence is thin because the project is young and niche. Its upstream metadata, docs.rs page, and Homebrew formula show the intended audience: CLI users, shell scripts, and AI-agent or developer-tool workflows that need small previews of large structured files.

The package fills a modern command-line gap: traditional head and tail are line-oriented, while JSON and YAML often need tree-aware truncation to remain understandable after sampling.

How it is used

A common use is piping JSON to `hson -c 800` to get a compact preview under a strict byte budget. Other examples include previewing many JSON files with a global budget, rendering strict JSON, showing YAML with comments, preserving grep matches under tight budgets, and summarizing source files by indentation-aware outlines.

The tool can read stdin or file paths, recurse through directories, respect git-aware ordering for multi-file summaries, and expose the same functionality as a Python library.

Why package nerds care

headson is interesting to package nerds because it is a tiny Rust CLI that wraps a very specific terminal workflow: inspect enough of a structured file without dumping the whole thing. It is especially suited to package-manager installs because users expect small inspection tools to be globally available on PATH.

It also reflects a newer CLI niche shaped by large logs, machine-readable APIs, and AI-agent context budgets: budgeted previews are no longer just cosmetic, they are part of keeping command output useful.

Timeline

• 2025-10: Repository created.
• 2025-10: v0.2.0 added support for multiple input files.
• 2025-10: v0.3.0 added tail-oriented sampling.
• 2025-10: v0.6.0 added color output.
• 2025-11: v0.6.2 added YAML loading and auto format detection features.
• 2025-11: v0.6.5 and v0.6.6 added line-based and Unicode character budget modes.

Related projects

• Unix head and tail are the conceptual ancestors.
• jq, yq, grep, ripgrep, and tree are adjacent command-line tools whose workflows headson references or emulates.
• docs.rs and crates.io are part of the Rust packaging ecosystem around the project.
• Python packaging is relevant because the README documents a Python library alongside the CLI.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/kantord/headson
• https://api.github.com/repos/kantord/headson/releases?per_page=100
• https://docs.rs/headson
• https://github.com/kantord/headson
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kantord/headson/main/README.md