IWE Tree

Display document hierarchy as a tree structure.

Usage

iwe tree [OPTIONS]

Options

When filter or anchor flags are provided, the selector resolves to a set of keys and those keys are used as the tree roots. Combining -k with the selector intersects the two — empty intersection yields an empty tree.

Output Formats

Markdown (default)

Nested list with links:

- [Main Document](main)
  - [Child Document](child)
    - [Nested Item](nested)
- [Another Root](another)

Keys

Document keys only with tab indentation:

main
	child
		nested
another

JSON

Nested JSON array structure:

[
  {
    "key": "main",
    "title": "Main Document",
    "children": [
      {
        "key": "child",
        "title": "Child Document",
        "children": []
      }
    ]
  }
]

children is always present (empty array on leaves). With --project f1,f2, the listed user-frontmatter fields are emitted alongside key, title, children per node:

iwe tree --project pillar,status -f json

Starting from Specific Documents

Use -k to start the tree from specific document(s):

iwe tree -k my-doc
iwe tree -k doc-a -k doc-b

This is essential for documents involved in circular references that have no natural root.

Handling Circular References

When documents form circular references (A→B→C→A), they have no natural root and won’t appear in the default tree output. Use -k to start from any document in the cycle:

iwe tree -k doc-a

Output shows the cycle:

- [Doc A](doc-a)
  - [Doc B](doc-b)
    - [Doc C](doc-c)
      - [Doc A](doc-a)

Examples

iwe tree
iwe tree -f keys
iwe tree -f json
iwe tree -f yaml
iwe tree -k my-doc
iwe tree -k doc-a -k doc-b
iwe tree --depth 2
iwe tree | grep -i api
iwe tree -f keys | grep cli

# Roots inside an anchor's subtree
iwe tree --included-by projects/alpha:0

# Tree restricted to drafts
iwe tree --filter 'status: draft'

Depth Impact

AI Agent Tips

• Use tree to understand the overall structure of a knowledge base
• Use -f keys for programmatic processing
• Use -f json or -f yaml for structured data consumption
• Pipe through grep to filter results
• Use -k to explore documents involved in circular references
• Use --depth 2 to quickly identify major topic areas

Deprecated aliases

The following flags pre-date the query language and remain accepted for backward compatibility. Each invocation prints a one-line warning: ... is deprecated to stderr.