[Feature] Use --quiet by default for dbt show

[dbeatty10]

Is this your first time submitting a feature request?

• I have read the expectations for open source contributors
• I have searched the existing issues, and I could not find an existing issue for this feature
• I am requesting a straightforward extension of existing dbt functionality, rather than a Big Idea better suited to a discussion

Describe the feature

As described in #9840, It is often useful to pipe or redirect JSON output of dbt show for further downstream processing with a tool like the Python built-in json.tool or the jq swiss army knife.

It would be nice if the syntax were as simple as this to pipe JSON output to a downstream tool:

dbt show -s my_model --output json | python -m json.tool --json-lines

We'd want the --inline flag to be treated the same way as if --select we given instead.

Describe alternatives you've considered

The problem is that we currently need to do some gymnastics with --log-format, --output, and some downstream filtering to extract the desired JSON object 😢

It's certainly possible to require usage of the -q / --quiet flag, but it would be harder for folks to discover that way. If someone passes --output json, they probably want only JSON.

Who will this benefit?

Anyone that want to do any JSON post-processing in a terminal.

Are you interested in contributing this feature?

No response

Anything else?

We'd probably want the same behavior for all three of these subcommands:

• show (assuming a single node is selected)
• compile (when a single node is selected)
• list (regardless the number of nodes selected)

See #7994 for more detail about dbt list specifically.

[joellabes]

This just caught me out too, so wanted to note that it might not have to only be for JSON output.

I ran an inline query and got all the boilerplate:

(dbt-prod) joel@Joel-Labes joel-sandbox % dbt show --inline "select * from ANALYTICS_DEV.dbt_jlabes.salary_data"         
04:01:45  Running with dbt=1.8.2
04:01:45  Registered adapter: snowflake=1.8.2
04:01:46  Found 3 models, 1 snapshot, 1 test, 1 seed, 1 operation, 1 sql operation, 614 macros
04:01:46  
04:01:48  Concurrency: 8 threads (target='dev')
04:01:48  
04:01:49  Previewing inline node:
| EMPLOYEE_ID | NAME     | SALARY | HIRE_DATE  |
| ----------- | -------- | ------ | ---------- |
|           1 | Person 1 |  80000 | 2021-01-01 |
|           2 | Person 2 | 110000 | 2022-01-01 |
|           3 | Person 3 | 120000 | 2023-01-01 |

So thought I'd try using the --quiet flag but it overshot and I got no results at all:

(dbt-prod) joel@Joel-Labes joel-sandbox % dbt --quiet show --inline "select * from ANALYTICS_DEV.dbt_jlabes.salary_data"

Would have preferred

(dbt-prod) joel@Joel-Labes joel-sandbox % dbt --quiet show --inline "select * from ANALYTICS_DEV.dbt_jlabes.salary_data"
| EMPLOYEE_ID | NAME     | SALARY | HIRE_DATE  |
| ----------- | -------- | ------ | ---------- |
|           1 | Person 1 |  80000 | 2021-01-01 |
|           2 | Person 2 | 110000 | 2022-01-01 |
|           3 | Person 3 | 120000 | 2023-01-01 |

but purely for aesthetic reasons, I'm not piping it anywhere (just previewing a couple of tables and wanted a cleaner screenshot)

[MiConnell]

+1 for compile without logs but with the compiled query. It would be great to run dbt compile -q -s my_model and then pipe it to my clipboard or vscode without the logs at the top.