Operating Outside a Catalog

Most commands need a catalog.

Some do not.

op eval

ic op eval can run outside a catalog when the operation does not require catalog files.

For example:

printf '[{"traces":[{}],"content":" hello "}]' \
  | ic op eval text.trim --input -

That makes op eval useful as a tiny pipeline laboratory.

When a catalog is still required

Operations that need filesystem context or catalog-backed paths still expect a meaningful working directory, and fact-related commands still require a real catalog directory.