feat(cli): honor NO_COLOR

[DavidWells]

Split from #8300 (3 of 9).

What

Honors the NO_COLOR convention: any non-empty NO_COLOR value disables ANSI colors — both in chalk output and in every prettyjson.render call site (deploy, sites:create, status, status:hooks, watch), which bypassed chalk's existing --json guard.

Measured: NO_COLOR=1 netlify env --help goes from 30 ANSI escape sequences to 0.

Why it helps agents

Agents consume CLI output through pipes and set NO_COLOR expecting clean text; today they get ANSI noise they have to strip (or worse, parse around). This is the informal standard nearly every modern CLI honors.

Testing

• New unit tests for shouldDisableColors
• typecheck ✓ lint ✓ 407 unit tests ✓

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Console output now respects the NO_COLOR environment variable, disabling colors when requested.
  • Several command outputs have more consistent formatting across status, deploy, site creation, and watch flows.

• Tests

  • Added coverage for NO_COLOR behavior and colorless output.

Walkthrough

This change introduces NO_COLOR environment variable support via a new exported shouldDisableColors() helper in command-helpers.ts, which now determines chalk color output and prettyJsonRenderOptions() behavior based on either the --json flag or NO_COLOR environment variable. Multiple command files (deploy, sites-create, status, status-hooks, watch) are updated to import and pass prettyJsonRenderOptions() into their prettyjson.render calls, standardizing JSON output formatting across these commands. A new unit test file validates shouldDisableColors() behavior and chalk's colorless initialization when NO_COLOR is set.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~12 minutes

Suggested reviewers: aitchiss

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly matches the main change: honoring NO_COLOR in the CLI.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is directly about the same NO_COLOR CLI color-disabling changes and tests.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch split/no-color

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[github-actions]

📊 Benchmark results

Comparing with 3c41e72

• Dependency count: 1,127 (no change)
• Package size: 379 MB (no change)
• Number of ts-expect-error directives: 359 (no change)

[coderabbitai]

🧹 Nitpick comments (2)

src/utils/command-helpers.ts (2)

36-44: 📐 Maintainability & Code Quality | 🔵 Trivial | 💤 Low value

Duplicate NO_COLOR/--json condition — extract shared helper.

The argv.includes('--json') || shouldDisableColors() expression is duplicated between chalk init (Line 39) and prettyJsonRenderOptions() (Line 43). Extracting a single shouldUseNoColor() helper would prevent the two call sites from drifting if the condition changes later.

♻️ Proposed refactor

+const shouldUseNoColor = (): boolean => argv.includes('--json') || shouldDisableColors()
+
-export const chalk = safeChalk(argv.includes('--json') || shouldDisableColors())
+export const chalk = safeChalk(shouldUseNoColor())

 export const prettyJsonRenderOptions = (): { noColor: boolean } => ({
-  noColor: argv.includes('--json') || shouldDisableColors(),
+  noColor: shouldUseNoColor(),
 })

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@src/utils/command-helpers.ts` around lines 36 - 44, The NO_COLOR/--json check
is duplicated between the `chalk` initialization and
`prettyJsonRenderOptions()`, so extract a shared helper in `command-helpers.ts`
(for example alongside `shouldDisableColors`) and use it in both places. Keep
the existing `shouldDisableColors` behavior intact, but centralize the combined
`argv.includes('--json') || shouldDisableColors()` logic so `chalk` and
`prettyJsonRenderOptions` stay consistent if the condition changes later.

---

36-42: 📐 Maintainability & Code Quality | 🔵 Trivial | 💤 Low value

Doc comments describe implementation behavior.

The added comments on Lines 36 and 41 explain what the following line does (e.g., "any non-empty value disables colors"), which the guideline for .ts files says to avoid — code should be self-explanatory instead of comment-annotated. As per path instructions, "Never write comments on what the code does; make the code clean and self-explanatory instead."

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@src/utils/command-helpers.ts` around lines 36 - 42, The new doc comments on
shouldDisableColors, chalk, and prettyJsonRenderOptions are describing
implementation behavior instead of letting the code speak for itself. Remove
those explanatory comments from command-helpers.ts and keep the logic
self-explanatory through the existing identifiers shouldDisableColors, chalk,
and prettyJsonRenderOptions; if clarification is still needed, prefer clearer
naming or structure over comments.

Source: Coding guidelines

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Nitpick comments:
In `@src/utils/command-helpers.ts`:
- Around line 36-44: The NO_COLOR/--json check is duplicated between the `chalk`
initialization and `prettyJsonRenderOptions()`, so extract a shared helper in
`command-helpers.ts` (for example alongside `shouldDisableColors`) and use it in
both places. Keep the existing `shouldDisableColors` behavior intact, but
centralize the combined `argv.includes('--json') || shouldDisableColors()` logic
so `chalk` and `prettyJsonRenderOptions` stay consistent if the condition
changes later.
- Around line 36-42: The new doc comments on shouldDisableColors, chalk, and
prettyJsonRenderOptions are describing implementation behavior instead of
letting the code speak for itself. Remove those explanatory comments from
command-helpers.ts and keep the logic self-explanatory through the existing
identifiers shouldDisableColors, chalk, and prettyJsonRenderOptions; if
clarification is still needed, prefer clearer naming or structure over comments.

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: a3ef274a-3eef-4553-b733-a6dade3735e6

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 3c41e72 and 9f5829d.

📒 Files selected for processing (7)

• src/commands/deploy/deploy.ts
• src/commands/sites/sites-create.ts
• src/commands/status/status-hooks.ts
• src/commands/status/status.ts
• src/commands/watch/watch.ts
• src/utils/command-helpers.ts
• tests/unit/utils/no-color.test.ts

🔗 Linked repositories identified

CodeRabbit considers these linked repositories for cross-repo context during reviews:

• netlify/blueprints (manual)