jq

jq is a lightweight command-line JSON processor — the default tool for slicing, filtering, mapping, and transforming JSON in shell pipelines, CI, and ad hoc debugging. We adopt it under Tool wherever JSON appears at the CLI; pair with yq when the source format is YAML (or use yq to emit JSON and pipe into jq).

Blurb

jq is like sed for JSON data — you can use it to slice and filter and map and transform structured data with the same ease that sed, awk, grep and friends let you play with text.

Summary

jq (jqlang/jq) is a portable C binary with zero runtime dependencies: filter expressions, pretty-printing, arithmetic, objects/arrays, and streaming for large inputs. The project revived under the jqlang org (1.7+ after a long hiatus); current stable is 1.8.x per jqlang.org.

Use in one-liners (curl … | jq '.items[]'), policy checks (parse terraform show -json), and log wrangling. Prefer yq when you need YAML round-trips with comments preserved; prefer jq when JSON is the native format or you want the de facto query dialect.

Details

• Install: download (static binary), Homebrew (jq), apt/dnf packages; verify with jq --version.
• Docs: tutorial, manual.
• License: MIT (upstream).
• CI / ops: pipe API and tool JSON output through jq for assertions and field extraction; combine with curl, gh api, kubectl … -o json.
• Fit: Tool — CLI JSON query/processor.
• Contrast: yq for YAML-first workflows; language-native JSON APIs when a shell one-liner is not enough.