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Max

Querying Data

Once you’ve synced a data source, you can query it with max search. All queries run against your local store - they’re fast, free, and you can run as many as you want.

Terminal window
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --limit 5
LinearIssue: 5 results, more available


  _id        identifier  title                        state
  001b2c..   ATL-811     Validate TinyBird POC        Done
  00482b..   MET-3898    Delete redshift cluster 1    Done
  005610..   FEA-98      Feature Improvement: FP...   Canceled
  007a12..   ATL-455     Update staging config        In Progress
  009f3e..   BUG-221     Fix login redirect loop      Todo


Next page: --after ein:LinearIssue:009f3e...

By default, search returns _id plus all schema-defined fields in a table format.

Filtering results

Use --filter (or -f) to narrow results with boolean expressions:

Terminal window
# Exact match
max search linear-1 LinearIssue -f 'state=Done'


# Comparison
max search linear-1 LinearIssue -f 'priority > 2'


# Pattern match (substring)
max search linear-1 LinearIssue -f 'title~="Zendesk"'


# Compound filters
max search linear-1 LinearIssue -f 'state=Done AND priority > 2'


# Grouped conditions
max search linear-1 LinearIssue -f '(state=Todo OR state="In Progress") AND priority >= 3'

Filter operators

OperatorMeaning
=Equals
!=Not equals
>Greater than
>=Greater than or equal
<Less than
<=Less than or equal
~=Pattern match (substring)

Combine expressions with AND and OR. Use parentheses to control grouping.

Quote the filter string to prevent shell interpretation. Use inner quotes for values with spaces: --filter 'state="In Progress"'.

Choosing fields

Use --fields to control which columns appear in output:

Terminal window
# Specific fields only
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --fields="title,state,assignee"


# All schema properties (no meta fields)
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --fields=".props"


# All meta fields (_id, _ref)
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --fields=".meta"


# Everything
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --fields=".all"


# Mix named fields with selectors
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --fields="_id,title,.meta"

When you omit --fields, you get _id plus all schema properties - equivalent to --fields="_id,.props".

See Field Selection for the full guide on selectors and namespaces.

Ordering

Sort results with --order-by:

Terminal window
# Ascending (default)
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --order-by priority


# Descending
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --order-by priority:desc


# Explicit ascending
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --order-by identifier:asc

Output formats

Max supports three output formats. See Output and Pagination for full details.

text (default) - human-readable table, good for exploration.

json - single JSON object with a data array and pagination metadata:

Terminal window
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --limit 2 -o json
{
  "type": "LinearIssue",
  "data": [
    { "_id": "001b...", "identifier": "ATL-811", "title": "...", "state": "Done" },
    { "_id": "004b...", "identifier": "MET-3898", "title": "...", "state": "Done" }
  ],
  "hasMore": true,
  "cursor": "ein:LinearIssue:00482baa-..."
}

ndjson - one JSON object per line, with a _meta line at the end. Good for piping:

Terminal window
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --limit 2 -o ndjson
{"_id":"001b...","identifier":"ATL-811","title":"...","state":"Done"}
{"_id":"004b...","identifier":"MET-3898","title":"...","state":"Done"}
{"_meta":{"type":"LinearIssue","hasMore":true,"cursor":"ein:LinearIssue:00482baa-..."}}

Discovering your schema

Use max schema to see what entity types and fields are available for a connector:

Terminal window
max schema @max/connector-linear

To find out which connector an installation uses, check its status:

Terminal window
max -t my-project/linear-1 status

Composing with shell tools

Machine-readable output formats make it easy to pipe Max output into other tools:

Terminal window
# Count open issues
max search linear-1 LinearIssue -f 'state=Todo' --all -o ndjson | wc -l


# Extract titles with jq
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --limit 10 -o json | jq '.data[].title'


# Export to CSV
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --all -o json \
  | jq -r '.data[] | [.identifier, .title, .state] | @csv'


# Find issues mentioning a keyword
max search linear-1 LinearIssue --all -f 'title~="migration"' --fields="identifier,title" -o json

Use --all to auto-paginate and stream all results. There’s no practical cost to large result sets since everything runs locally.

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