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ohara explain

Run an explain_change query from the command line. Returns the same JSON envelope as the MCP tool (see explain_change) so the result is pipeable into jq.

Usage

ohara explain <FILE> [PATH] [--lines START:END] [--k N] [--no-diff]
FlagDefaultDescription
FILE (positional)requiredRepo-relative path to the file to explain.
PATH (positional).Path to the repo.
--linesfull fileLine range as START:END (1-based, inclusive). Either bound may be omitted — :42 starts at line 1, 10: runs to end-of-file. Omit --lines entirely to explain the whole file.
-k, --k5Number of commits to return; clamped to 1..=20.
--no-diffoffSuppress diff excerpts in the output (only blame attribution and metadata).

Examples

Explain lines 40–60 of src/auth.rs with the top-3 contributing commits:

ohara explain src/auth.rs --lines 40:60 --k 3

Explain the whole file, no diff excerpts:

ohara explain src/auth.rs --no-diff

Open-ended range — line 100 to end of file:

ohara explain src/auth.rs --lines 100:

Pipe the newest contributor SHA into another tool:

ohara explain src/auth.rs --lines 1:50 | jq -r '.hits[0].commit_sha'

Notes

  • Line numbers are 1-based and inclusive on both bounds. Open-ended ranges resolve END = 0 to the file’s actual last line by reading the workdir checkout.
  • Every result has provenance = "EXACT" — explain_change is backed by git blame, not embeddings.
  • The _meta.explain.blame_coverage field reports the fraction of queried lines attributed to a known commit. Less than 1.0 means some lines landed on a SHA older than the local watermark — re-run ohara index to backfill.