jq is a command-line filter language for JSON. It can select fields, filter arrays, reshape objects, calculate values, and produce raw text from structured md-utils output.

Collection-mode frontmatter output is designed to pipe directly into jq:

md-utils fm dump posts/ | jq '.frontMatter[].title'
md-utils fm dump posts/ | jq '[.frontMatter[] | select(.status == "draft")]'
md-utils fm dump posts/ | jq '.frontMatter | length'

Keep JSON output when more structured processing will follow. Use jq -r only when the next command expects unquoted text rather than JSON strings.