---
phase: requirements
title: Requirements & Problem Understanding
description: Clarify the problem space, gather requirements, and define success criteria
---

# Requirements & Problem Understanding

## Problem Statement
**What problem are we solving?**

- `memory search` currently prints JSON only, which is harder to scan quickly in terminals.
- Developers who run frequent knowledge lookups need a compact, human-readable view for CLI workflows.
- Current workaround is manual JSON inspection or external filtering tools, which slows common usage.

## Goals & Objectives
**What do we want to achieve?**

- Add a new optional parameter to `memory search` to render results as a table.
- Ensure table output includes exactly `id`, `title`, and `scope` columns.
- Keep existing default behavior unchanged for backward compatibility.
- Non-goals:
  - Changing memory retrieval/ranking logic.
  - Replacing JSON as the default output format.
  - Adding sorting/pagination customization in this change.

## User Stories & Use Cases
**How will users interact with the solution?**

- As a CLI user, I want `memory search` table output so I can scan results faster.
- As a maintainer, I want backward compatibility so existing scripts that parse JSON do not break.
- As a user, I want key identifiers shown (`id`, `title`, `scope`) so I can quickly pick an item for follow-up operations.
- Edge cases:
  - No results found.
  - Very long titles in narrow terminals.
  - Mixed scopes across results (`global`, `project:*`, `repo:*`).

## Success Criteria
**How will we know when we're done?**

- `npx ai-devkit@latest memory search --query "<q>" --table` displays a terminal table.
- Table columns are present and ordered: `id`, `title`, `scope`.
- `npx ai-devkit@latest memory search --query "<q>"` without `--table` preserves current JSON output behavior.
- Existing search filters (`--tags`, `--scope`, `--limit`) continue to work with `--table`.
- When no results are found in table mode, CLI prints a clear warning and exits successfully (exit code `0`).

## Constraints & Assumptions
**What limitations do we need to work within?**

- Must align with current CLI stack (Commander + existing `ui.table` helper).
- Should not require API/schema changes in the memory service.
- Table rendering should remain readable in standard terminal widths.
- Assume memory search result objects already provide `id`, `title`, and `scope`.

## Questions & Open Items
**What do we still need to clarify?**

- No open items at this time.
