REQ-F-008: NO_COLOR and CI Environment Detection

Tier: Framework-Automatic | Priority: P0

Source: §8 ANSI & Color Code Leakage

Addresses: Severity: High / Token Spend: Medium / Time: Low / Context: Medium

Description

The framework MUST check for NO_COLOR (any value, including empty, per no-color.org), CI, GITHUB_ACTIONS, JENKINS_URL, and TERM=dumb at startup. When any of these is present, the framework MUST disable all color and formatting output globally, including for stderr. The framework MUST also set NO_COLOR=1 in the process environment so that child processes and third-party libraries inherit the setting.

Acceptance Criteria

When NO_COLOR= (empty string), all ANSI output is disabled
A child process spawned by the framework inherits NO_COLOR=1
TERM=dumb alone is sufficient to disable all color output

Schema

No dedicated schema type — this requirement governs environment detection behavior without adding new wire-format fields.

Wire Format

No wire-format fields — this requirement governs framework behavior only.

Example

Framework-Automatic: no command author action needed. The framework checks these variables at startup, before any command handler runs.

# Any of these env vars triggers color disable + NO_COLOR propagation

$ NO_COLOR= tool deploy         # empty string is sufficient per no-color.org
$ CI=true tool deploy           # CI pipeline detection
$ GITHUB_ACTIONS=true tool deploy
$ JENKINS_URL=http://... tool deploy
$ TERM=dumb tool deploy

# In all cases:
# - No ANSI escape sequences in stdout or stderr
# - Child processes inherit NO_COLOR=1
$ NO_COLOR= tool deploy -- sh -c 'echo $NO_COLOR'
1

Requirement	Tier	Relationship
REQ-F-007	F	Extends: env detection provides an upstream signal that prevents ANSI injection
REQ-F-003	F	Composes: `CI` and `NO_COLOR` also trigger JSON mode activation
REQ-F-006	F	Composes: color suppression applies to both stdout and stderr streams