playcheck

Readable previews for ansible-playbook --check --diff.

Ansible's check mode tells you what a playbook would change — but the raw output is an unstructured scroll, and tasks that can't be simulated (shell, command, raw, …) are silently skipped with the same skipping: line as an ordinary conditional skip. People read "no diff shown" as "no change", and that's false.

playcheck runs the check for you and reformats the result so it's readable in ten seconds:

• Per-host grouping — web-01: 4 changes · 2 not previewable
• Colored add/remove diffs instead of raw unified-diff walls
• Explicit flagging of every task that could not be previewed, including tasks with check_mode: false that executed for real during the check
• Top-line summary — hosts affected, tasks that would change, tasks that could not be simulated

$ playcheck run site.yml -i inventory.ini

web-01  4 changes · 2 not previewable
  ~ Write nginx config (copy)
      +server {
      +  listen 80;
      +}
  ! Restart nginx (shell)  NOT PREVIEWED — Command would have run if not in check mode
  ~ Write API token (copy)  [diff censored (no_log)]

SUMMARY
  hosts: 2 of 2 would change
  tasks: 5 would change (2 with hidden diffs)
  ⚠ 3 tasks were NOT simulated (module does not support check mode) — the real run may change more than shown.

Install

pipx install playcheck   # or: pip install playcheck

Requires Python ≥ 3.9 and an existing ansible-playbook on PATH (ansible-core ≥ 2.9). No other dependencies.

Usage

playcheck run <playbook> -i <inventory> [-l LIMIT] [-t TAGS] [--no-color] [--quiet]

Anything after -- is passed to ansible-playbook unchanged:

playcheck run site.yml -i prod.ini -- -e env=prod --vault-password-file .vault

playcheck adds --check --diff itself — it never applies changes. The exit code mirrors ansible-playbook's (0 on success even when changes are pending; non-zero on task failures or unreachable hosts).

For CI gating there are two opt-in exit codes, checked in this order after a clean ansible run:

--format markdown emits a GitHub-flavored report (collapsible per-host sections, fenced diffs) suitable for PR comments and $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY.

GitHub Action

Post the preview as a PR comment, terraform plan-style. The comment is updated in place on subsequent pushes instead of spamming the thread:

on: pull_request

jobs:
  preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      pull-requests: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: Cjayy77/Playcheck@v0
        with:
          playbook: site.yml
          inventory: inventory/prod.ini
          ansible-core-version: "2.17"   # optional
          extra-args: "-l web -e env=prod"

How it works

playcheck doesn't scrape ansible's human-readable output (which is ambiguous — an unsupported-check-mode skip and a when:-conditional skip print identically). Instead it ships a tiny stdout callback plugin and invokes ansible-playbook with ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=playcheck_jsonl, receiving one structured JSON event per task result, including diffs, skip reasons, and check-mode metadata.

Safety notes:

• no_log results are censored by Ansible before they reach any callback; playcheck never sees the secret.
• diff: false tasks arrive with an empty diff; playcheck marks them [diff hidden by task setting] rather than pretending nothing changed.
• Any skip that can't be positively attributed to a when: condition is flagged as not previewed. Over-flagging is a feature: silently missing an unsimulated task is the exact failure this tool exists to prevent.

Status

Alpha. CLI formatter and GitHub Action work; GitLab CI wrapper is planned.

Verified against ansible-core 2.15, 2.17, 2.19, and 2.21 with real --check --diff runs — the test suite replays against fresh captures from each version (scripts/version_matrix.sh, also run in CI), not hand-written fixtures. Classification never depends on exact skip-message text: any skip that can't be positively attributed to a when: conditional is flagged, which is what catches raw (skipped with no message at all) and whatever future ansible versions do differently.

Development

pip install -e . pytest
pytest

# regenerate fixtures from a real run (Linux/WSL, needs ansible-core):
ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=playcheck_jsonl \
ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_PLUGINS=src/playcheck/_ansible/callback_plugins \
ansible-playbook testdata/site.yml -i testdata/inventory.ini --check --diff \
  > tests/fixtures/jsonl_output.jsonl

License

MIT