JSONL stream

The JSONL reporter writes one JSON object per line, a complete event stream of the run. It is the richest of the four reporters: every step and every UI action carries its full request, response, and timing data.

Usage

tales test ./e2e/pass --report-jsonl ./reports/events.jsonl

The file is written after the suite completes (not incrementally). The parent directory is created if missing.

Event types

Each line carries a type field. There are three:

`type`	Emitted when
`scenario`	Once per scenario, summarising its final status, duration, and (when failed/skipped) error / skip reason.
`step`	Once per step. Includes a `phase` field set to `"step"` for main-flow steps and `"teardown"` for teardown steps. Retried steps surface their attempt count via `attempts`.
`action`	Once per UI action for mobile steps that recorded actions (any `--capture-screenshots` mode other than `none`). Emitted immediately after the parent `step` event.

There is no separate suite_start / suite_end envelope. Scenario aggregation is up to the consumer (jq -s 'group_by(.scenario)' or similar).

Example

{"type":"scenario","scenario":"Create blog post","file":"e2e/pass/blog.tales","status":"pass","duration_ms":842,"seed":1234}
{"type":"step","phase":"step","scenario":"Create blog post","step":"create_user","provider":"http","status":"pass","status_code":201,"duration_ms":312,"seed":1234,"file":"e2e/pass/blog.tales","request":{"method":"POST","url":"http://localhost:1337/users"},"response":{"status_code":201,"json":{"id":"u_abc"}}}
{"type":"step","phase":"step","scenario":"Create blog post","step":"create_post","provider":"http","status":"pass","status_code":201,"duration_ms":418,"seed":1234,"file":"e2e/pass/blog.tales"}
{"type":"step","phase":"teardown","scenario":"Create blog post","step":"delete_user","provider":"http","status":"pass","status_code":204,"duration_ms":112,"seed":1234,"file":"e2e/pass/blog.tales"}

The order is scenario event first, then its step events (main flow, then teardown) interleaved with any action events.

Fields you can rely on

`scenario` event

Field	Type	Notes
`type`	string	Always `"scenario"`.
`scenario`	string	Scenario name.
`file`	string	Path to the `.tales` file that defines the scenario.
`status`	string	`pass`, `fail`, `skipped`.
`duration_ms`	number	End-to-end wall-clock duration of the scenario.
`seed`	number	The `--seed` value used for this run.
`error`	object	When failed: kind, path, want, got, message.
`skip_reason`	string	Present only when `status="skipped"`. Omitted otherwise.

`step` event

Field	Type	Notes
`type`	string	Always `"step"`.
`phase`	string	`"step"` for main-flow steps; `"teardown"` for teardown steps.
`scenario`	string	Scenario name.
`step`	string	Step name.
`provider`	string	`http`, `sql`, `mobile`, `keyword`.
`status`	string	`pass`, `fail`, `skipped`.
`duration_ms`	number	Step duration including retries.
`seed`	number	The `--seed` value used for this run.
`file`	string	Path to the `.tales` file that defines the step.
`status_code`	number	HTTP status code, when applicable. Omitted for non-HTTP steps.
`attempts`	number	Total attempts run, present only when greater than 1 (the step retried). A single-attempt step omits the field entirely.
`skip_reason`	string	Present only when `status="skipped"`. Omitted otherwise.
`request`	object	Provider-specific request shape. Omitted when empty.
`response`	object	Provider-specific response shape. Omitted when empty.
`actions`	array	Mobile: per-action records, mirrored at the request level.
`artifacts`	object	Mobile: paths to screenshot / hierarchy files. Omitted when empty.
`error`	object	When failed: kind, path, want, got, message.

`action` event (mobile only)

One per UI action, emitted after the step event when step.actions is populated. Empty action arrays produce byte-identical JSONL to the pre-action-stream format, so legacy consumers keep working.

{
  "type": "action",
  "scenario": "iOS register",
  "step": "fill_form",
  "index": 0,
  "kind": "input_text",
  "label": "register.email",
  "value": "[email protected]",
  "status": "pass",
  "duration_ms": 42,
  "screenshot": "build/artifacts/mobile/.../screenshot.png",
  "hierarchy":  "build/artifacts/mobile/.../hierarchy.json"
}

Secure values are masked to "***" at one boundary inside the mobile provider, see Visual HTML report.

DSN and secret masking

The SQL provider scrubs DSNs from every event before serialisation. Only the connection name, driver alias, SQL text, and arg count appear, never the connection string. See SQL provider for the full rules.

auth.basic.password is masked in HTTP request shapes. Other secrets injected via headers are not masked, capture them from upstream responses if you need masking.

Consuming the stream

With `jq`

# Count failures
jq -c 'select(.type=="step" and .status=="fail")' events.jsonl | wc -l

# All failure messages with their step path
jq -c 'select(.type=="step" and .status=="fail") | {scenario, step, msg:.failure.message}' events.jsonl

# Total wall-clock time across scenarios (parallelism aware)
jq -s 'map(select(.type=="scenario") | .duration_ms) | add' events.jsonl

# All retried steps with their attempt count
jq -c 'select(.type=="step" and .attempts) | {scenario, step, attempts}' events.jsonl

In a log pipeline

JSONL plays nicely with Loki, Elasticsearch, BigQuery, Snowflake, Datadog logs. Ingest the file once at suite end and query at will.