How to Use xcsift for AI-Parsable Xcode Build Output

Copying and pasting verbose Xcode build console logs into tools like Codex, Claude, or VS Code Copilot often confuses AI models due to the unstructured format.Łukasz Domaradzki built xcsift to parse xcodebuild and SPM output into concise JSON, making it easy for LLMs to understand errors and provide precise solutions.

Installation via Homebrew

Install xcsift using Homebrew for quick setup on macOS. If you don’t have Homebrew installed, check out my How to Install Homebrew on macOS post for detailed instructions on how to install Homebrew.

# Add the custom tap
brew tap ldomaradzki/xcsift

# Install the tool
brew install xcsift

Verify the installation:

xcsift --version

This outputs the version number, confirming xcsift is ready in your PATH.

Basic Usage

Pipe xcodebuild output to xcsift to get structured JSON instead of raw logs. Always redirect stderr to stdout with 2>&1 to capture all errors and warnings.

# Build a project and parse output
xcodebuild build 2>&1 | xcsift

Expected output is JSON summarizing the build:

{
  "status": "success",
  "summary": {
    "errors": 0,
    "warnings": 1,
    "failed_tests": 0,
    "build_time": "2.5 seconds"
  }
}

xcsift filters noise, extracts errors with file/line details, and counts issues, reducing tokens for AI processing.

Handling Tests and Warnings

For test runs, pipe similarly to get failure details.

# Run tests with parsed output
xcodebuild test 2>&1 | xcsift

To include detailed warnings in the JSON (default shows only count):

# Build with full warnings
xcodebuild build 2>&1 | xcsift --print-warnings

This adds a warnings array to the JSON, like:

{
  "warnings": [
    {
      "file": "ViewController.swift",
      "line": 23,
      "message": "variable 'temp' was never used; consider removing it"
    }
  ]
}

Use this for SPM projects too:

# Swift Package Manager build
swift build 2>&1 | xcsift

xcsift works with Swift 5.9+ and Xcode 15+, optimized for macOS arm64.

For more details, read the docs here.