Proposal

Why

Bulk validation currently prints one result for every item in scope, including clean items. That complete report is useful for audit and automation, but it can dominate agent context and CI logs in large, mostly-clean repositories. In one real 895-change archive, the complete JSON report was 157,396 bytes while a feasibility candidate's projected-v1 envelope was 6,740 bytes (95.7% smaller) with all 19 failures and the same exit status. The proposed envelope is different and may have a slightly different byte count; savings vary with issue density. This is evidence about output volume, not validation runtime.

What Changes

• Add an opt-in --report <full|findings> mode to explicit bulk validation scopes: --all, --changes, --specs, and --archived.
• Keep current behavior when --report is omitted, and preserve current human and JSON output for valid explicit bulk --report full requests.
• In findings mode, project complete item records whose issues.length > 0 into itemFindings, preserving full-report order, every issue severity, and all current or future additive item fields.
• Give JSON findings an exact report.kind: "validation-findings" discriminator and exact JSON-string report.version: "1.0". It does not reuse the full-v1 items field or claim conformance with that document.
• Use the current full-result inventory (items, summary, version, and root); there are no top-level advisory collections to project. Future advisory sections require an explicit contract decision.
• Require an explicit, non-conflicting bulk scope for either report value. Parsed invalid report requests return one stable structured JSON diagnostic before root selection, prompts, spinners, or validation. Missing option arguments retain existing CLI parser errors; root and discovery failures retain existing command diagnostics.

Capabilities

New Capabilities

None.

Modified Capabilities

• cli-validate: Add a compatibility-safe, opt-in findings report for bulk human and JSON validation output.

Impact

• Public CLI: one additive report option on bulk openspec validate; no default behavior change.
• JSON consumers: the existing full-v1 complete-items document remains unchanged. Consumers choosing findings mode parse a separately identified schema with itemFindings.
• Documentation and completions: document the two report modes, their scope rules, and the findings JSON envelope; register --report on the existing Bash, Zsh, Fish, and PowerShell completion surfaces, with fixed full/findings value suggestions only in Zsh and Fish.
• Implementation: validation command output, CLI option registration, completions, documentation, focused tests, and a release changeset. No new dependency or project-level preference.