Scan Results

The hounddog scan command supports eight output formats, selected with --output-format:

Format	Description	Requires API Key
console	Human-readable terminal output with tables and colors. The default.	No
markdown	A self-contained Markdown report with dataflow visualizations, code snippets, and remediation guidance.	No
json	Machine-readable JSON with the full scan results.	No
agent	Structured JSON optimized for AI coding agents, with remediation prompts. See also the MCP server.	No
ide	Machine-readable output for editor integrations.	No
sarif	SARIF for security tools such as GitHub Advanced Security.	Yes
gitlab	GitLab SAST report format for GitLab’s vulnerability dashboard. See GitLab CI/CD.	Yes
checkmarx	Checkmarx-compatible SARIF for Checkmarx One BYOR. See Checkmarx.	Yes

The sarif, gitlab, and checkmarx formats require a valid HOUNDDOG_API_KEY (Enterprise plan).

Output Destination

Use --output-path to write the results to a file:

bash

hounddog scan --output-format=sarif --output-path=hounddog.sarif

Without --output-path:

• json, agent, sarif, gitlab, and checkmarx write to stdout, so you can pipe or redirect them.
• markdown writes to a timestamped file named hounddog-report-<date>-<time>.md in the current directory.
• console prints to the terminal.

The ide format always writes to stdout and ignores --output-path.

For all formats other than console and markdown, the scanner suppresses its progress logging so that stdout carries only the results.

Markdown Reports

The markdown format generates a point-in-time report of the sensitive data elements in your codebase, along with their sensitivity levels, occurrence counts, file locations, and code snippets. See a sample report on GitHub.

Here is an example command that scans the directory ~/foo and generates a Markdown file at ~/foo/report.md:

bash

hounddog scan ~/foo --output-format=markdown --output-path=report.md

Viewing the Report

We strongly recommend using Google Chrome and the Markdown Viewer browser extension to view the reports. Enable the extension’s mermaid and toc options to ensure all content renders correctly, including the dataflow diagrams:

File access must also be granted to the extension. Right-click the extension icon and choose Manage Extension:

Then enable Automatically allow access on the following sites and Allow access to file URLs:

Listing Data Elements and Data Sinks

The data-elements list and data-sinks list subcommands support their own formats via --output-format: console (default), json, html, and markdown. For example, to generate a browsable HTML catalog of all data sinks:

bash

hounddog data-sinks list --output-format=html --output-path=data-sinks.html