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Bowerbird

bwrb explain

explain evaluates a note’s configured transition guards without writing.

Synopsis

Section titled “Synopsis”
Terminal window
bwrb explain <query> --transition <field=value|value> [--output text|json]

The query must resolve exactly by path, name, alias, or ID-compatible exact targeting. The full field = value form is always deterministic. A value-only shorthand such as accepted works only when exactly one configured guard enters that value.

Terminal window
bwrb explain "Candidate 417" --transition "status = accepted"
bwrb explain "Candidate 417" --transition accepted --output json

Text output begins with Allowed or Blocked and reports every relation requirement as missing, unresolved, stale, failed, or satisfied. JSON returns the same complete explanation DTO used by guarded edit failures.

A valid blocked explanation exits 0: blocked is workflow state, not a command failure. Invalid targeting, ambiguous shorthand, malformed transition syntax, or invalid schema configuration exits nonzero.