Lambë

Lambë

A query language for structured data that shows you what you're working with.

lam queries JSON, YAML, TOML, HCL, CSV, TSV, and Markdown. Unlike other query tools, it tells you what your query does before you run it — the shape at each pipe stage, which output formats can serialize the result, what would go wrong.

Use it when you don't already know the data: inspecting an unfamiliar API response, auditing a Helm chart, verifying a CI pipeline's assumptions, or asking an AI agent to extract something without guessing at the structure.

$ lam --to toml '.dependencies | keys' pubspec.yaml
Error: TOML output requires a map at the root, got list<string>.
Try appending one of:
  | as(toml)    # Wraps the list under a single-entry map (equivalent to `{items: .}`).

$ lam --to toml '.dependencies | keys | as(toml)' pubspec.yaml
items = ["rumil", "rumil_parsers", "rumil_expressions"]

Queries are bounded and always terminate. No recursion, no lambdas, no def. That's the tradeoff: Lambë doesn't try to be a programming language, so its shape inference, --explain, --schema, and error remediations all work.

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View the full README on GitHub