30-second answer

report renders a stored report in another format. It evaluates nothing, so what comes out says exactly what the stored document said.

PowerShell
m365-governance report [-h] [--format {markdown,json,html}] report

Why re-rendering is its own command

A stored result and a fresh evaluation are different claims. Re-running the rules against the same evidence with a newer engine can legitimately produce a different answer, and calling that "the same report in HTML" would be misleading.

report therefore never touches the rules. It takes what was decided and renders it again. If you want a fresh decision, that is evaluate.

The three formats agree

markdown, json and html are renderings of the same run. None of them is a summary of another, and a finding present in one is present in all three. The JSON is not a reduced machine view of a fuller human document.

Exit codes

0 rendered. 2 the document was not something this command can render.