Skip to content

Custom Column Layouts and Aliases

The ai-blame blame command provides fine-grained control over output formatting with customizable column layouts and abbreviation aliases.

Column Layout DSL

Use the --columns flag with a mini-DSL to specify which columns to display and their order:

ai-blame blame <file> --columns AMTLC

Available Column Specifiers

Letter Column Description
A Agent Agent tool and version (e.g., claude-code@1.0.0)
M Model AI model name (e.g., claude-3-opus)
T Timestamp When the change was made
L Line Line number
C Code Source code content

Examples

# Show only model, timestamp, line, and code (default when --show-agent is false)
ai-blame blame src/main.rs --columns MTLC

# Show agent, model, and code columns only
ai-blame blame src/main.rs --columns AMC

# Minimal output: just line numbers and code
ai-blame blame src/main.rs --columns LC

# Full output with custom order
ai-blame blame src/main.rs --columns CATML

Abbreviation Aliases

Long agent and model names can make output cluttered. Use alias flags to define shorter abbreviations:

Agent Aliases

ai-blame blame <file> --agent-alias claude-code=CC --agent-alias cursor=CR

Model Aliases

ai-blame blame <file> --model-alias claude-3-opus=opus --model-alias gpt-4o=gpt4o

Combined Example

ai-blame blame src/main.rs \
  --columns AMTLC \
  --agent-alias claude-code=CC \
  --agent-alias cursor=CR \
  --model-alias claude-3-opus=opus-4.5 \
  --model-alias gpt-4o=gpt4o

This produces compact output like: 

Agent        | Model     | Timestamp        | Line | Code
-------------|-----------|------------------|------|------------------
CC@1.0.0     | opus-4.5  | 2025-12-01 09:00 |   1  | fn main() {
CR@2.1.0     | gpt4o     | 2025-12-01 10:15 |   2  |     println!("Hello");

Relationship to --show-agent

When using the legacy --show-agent flag:

  • Without --columns: --show-agent controls whether the Agent column is included in the default layout
  • With --columns: --show-agent is ignored; explicitly include A in your column spec to show agent information
# These are equivalent:
ai-blame blame file.rs --show-agent
ai-blame blame file.rs --columns AMTLC

# These are equivalent:
ai-blame blame file.rs 
ai-blame blame file.rs --columns MTLC

Default Behavior

  • Default columns (no --columns flag): MTLC (model, timestamp, line, code)
  • With --show-agent: AMTLC (agent, model, timestamp, line, code)
  • Case insensitive: amtlc works the same as AMTLC
  • Whitespace ignored: A M T L C works the same as AMTLC

Error Handling

Invalid column specifiers produce helpful error messages:

$ ai-blame blame file.rs --columns AMXLC
Error: invalid column specifier 'X' in "AMXLC". Valid specifiers: A, M, T, L, C

Performance Notes

  • Column selection doesn't affect parsing performance—all data is extracted regardless
  • Fewer columns produce cleaner, more readable output for large files
  • Use aliases to keep output compact while preserving readability