jid

jid (JSON Incremental Digger) is a terminal tool for exploring JSON interactively. You pipe JSON into it (for example curl -s <url> | jid or jid < file.json) and type a filter query in a [Filter]> prompt. The JSON view updates as you type, and pressing Enter prints the current result and exits.

Queries use jq-like dot-path notation such as .bb.aaa[2]. jid also supports JMESPath, which it switches to automatically when a query contains pipes, wildcards ([*]), filter expressions ([?), or function calls. Tab completes field names and cycles through candidates, and the matching key is highlighted in the JSON view, which scrolls to it. After a |, jid suggests JMESPath functions filtered by the type of the preceding expression (array, object, string, number). It fills in argument templates, such as sort_by(@, &field), and completes &field names from the base array. It also rewrites patterns like [*].field[0] to [*].field | [0] so [0] indexes the projected array.

Other features include query history, scroll and cursor keybindings, a toggle between whole-JSON and keys-only view, and options for an initial query as the first argument, -q (output the query, for use with jq), and -M (monochrome). A TOML config file (~/.config/jid/config.toml on Linux, with macOS and Windows equivalents) customizes keybindings, history path and size, and exit_on_enter. It is aimed at developers and ops engineers who inspect API responses or large JSON files in the shell.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install jid

# via Scoop
scoop install jid

# via Go
go install github.com/simeji/jid/cmd/jid@latest