commit-check outputs human-readable ASCII art, making it hard for AI agents and automation toolchains to consume results programmatically. This adds two complementary AI-native interfaces without breaking any existing behaviour.

--format json CLI flag

Suppresses decorative terminal output; emits structured JSON to stdout. Exit code unchanged.

echo "bad commit" | commit-check -m --format json

{
  "status": "fail",
  "checks": [
    {
      "check": "message",
      "status": "fail",
      "value": "bad commit",
      "error": "The commit message should follow Conventional Commits…",
      "suggest": "Use <type>(<scope>): <description>…"
    }
  ]
}

commit_check/api.py — in-process Python API

Validates commits without spawning a subprocess. All functions return the same {"status", "checks"} schema.

from commit_check.api import validate_message, validate_branch, validate_all

validate_message("feat: add streaming support")["status"]  # "pass"

result = validate_all(
    message="feat: implement feature",
    branch="feature/implement-feature",
    author_email="dev@example.com",
    config={"commit": {"allow_commit_types": ["feat", "fix"]}},
)
for check in result["checks"]:
    if check["status"] == "fail":
        print(check["error"], "→", check["suggest"])

API surface: validate_message, validate_branch, validate_author, validate_all — all accept an optional config dict to override defaults inline.

Engine changes (commit_check/engine.py)

• CheckOutcome dataclass — per-rule structured result (check, status, value, error, suggest)
• ValidationEngine.validate_all_detailed() — runs all validators with output suppressed, returns list[CheckOutcome]
• BaseValidator._suppress_output / _last_failure — allows silent failure capture without changing validator call signatures