Hidden Steps

A hidden step runs a command silently — no prompt is shown, no text is typed, and no keypress is required. The command executes immediately and its output can be captured into a variable for use in later steps.

Basic usage

steps:
  - text: "nono audit list --recent 1 --json"
    hidden: true
    capture:
      name: session_id
      json_path: "[0].session_id"

  - text: "nono audit show {session_id}"

The first step runs invisibly and stores the session ID. The second step types and executes normally, with {session_id} substituted in.

When to use hidden steps

Use hidden: true when a command is infrastructure for the demo rather than part of the story — for example, fetching an ID or token that a later step needs, without cluttering the screen with the lookup command.

For commands that should run before the demo starts entirely, prefer setup commands instead. Hidden steps are useful when the command must run at a specific point in the demo flow (e.g., after a previous step has created a resource).

Capturing JSON output

The json_path capture option is particularly useful with hidden steps:

steps:
  - text: "myapp jobs create --json"
    hidden: true
    capture:
      name: job_id
      json_path: "id"

  - text: "myapp jobs wait {job_id}"
  - text: "myapp jobs logs {job_id}"

See Configuration for the full json_path syntax reference.

How it works

When hidden: true is set:

• The prompt is not printed
• The command text is not typed
• No keypress or auto-advance wait occurs
• The command executes immediately
• Any capture block is still applied and the variable is stored
• The step is otherwise invisible to the audience

Dry-run

Hidden steps are shown in --dry-run output with a [hidden] annotation so you can verify they are in the right position:

~ $ nono audit list --recent 1 --json  [hidden, capture]
~ $ nono audit show {session_id}