Skip to content

lore list

List all documents in your corpus with metadata.

Synopsis

lore list [flags]

What Does This Do?

Displays a table of every document in .lore/docs/, sorted by date (newest first). Think of it as the table of contents for your project's corpus.

Analogy: lore list is the index of a book — all chapters at a glance with their dates and types. lore show reads a specific chapter.

Real World Scenario

Release day. You need to see everything documented since the last tag. A quick glance at the full corpus:

lore list --type decision

12 decisions, sorted by date. You know exactly what changed and why.

lore list

Flags

Flag Type Default Description
--type <type> string — Show only documents of this type (decision, feature, bugfix, refactor, note, release)
--quiet bool false Tab-separated output for scripting

Output

lore list

TYPE       SLUG                                  DATE        TAGS
decision   database-selection-2026-02-10          2026-02-10  2 tags
feature    add-jwt-auth-2026-02-15                2026-02-15  3 tags
feature    add-rate-limiting-2026-03-16           2026-03-16  1 tag
refactor   extract-auth-middleware-2026-03-01     2026-03-01  0 tags
note       meeting-api-versioning-2026-03-20      2026-03-20  1 tag

Examples

Browse by type

# All decisions — great before architecture reviews
lore list --type decision

# All bugfixes — useful for post-mortems
lore list --type bugfix

# All notes — find that meeting summary
lore list --type note

Scripting

# Count total documents
lore list --quiet | wc -l

# Extract just filenames
lore list --quiet | cut -f2

# Find documents from March
lore list --quiet | grep "2026-03"

# Feed into a loop
lore list --quiet | while IFS=$'\t' read -r type slug date tags; do
  echo "Processing: $slug"
done

Combined with other commands

# List → Pick → Read (two-step workflow)
lore list --type decision
# → See: database-selection-2026-02-10
lore show "database"
# → Full document displayed

Tips & Tricks

  • Before a code review: lore list --type decision shows all architectural choices — great context for reviewers.
  • Before a release: lore list shows the full corpus. Combine with lore release to generate notes.
  • Quick count: lore list --quiet | wc -l gives the total number of documents.
  • Empty corpus? lore list shows a suggestion: "No documents yet. Try lore new or make a commit."

How It Differs from lore show

lore list lore show
Purpose See ALL documents at a glance SEARCH for specific documents
Output Table with metadata (type, date, tags) Full document content
Input No arguments needed Requires a keyword
Analogy Table of contents Reading a chapter

Exit Codes

Code Meaning
0 Success (even if empty — shows helpful message)
1 Error (.lore/ not found)

See Also