Guide

Quick start

Get up and running in a few minutes: set up a config, run your first validation, and pick the output format that pays off for your workflow.

1. Create a config

dollarlint init

The interactive setup writes a starter .dollarlint.toml. It asks before overwriting an existing config, and --defaults skips prompts for automation.

2. Validate a directory

dollarlint validate .

DollarLint discovers JSON, JSONC, JSON5, JSON Lines, YAML, and TOML files, skips common dependency and cache directories, respects the root .gitignore, loads declared schemas, and groups results by file.

Files without an in-file schema, config association, built-in association, or catalog match are skipped by default, but still counted in the summary so discovery remains visible. .dollarlint.toml is covered automatically by DollarLint's embedded config schema. Set schemas.requireCoverage = true when every included file must be covered by one of those schema sources.

3. Pinpoint issues with locations

dollarlint validate ./config --locations

Line and column positions are available for text and JSON output. SARIF always requests source mapping so code scanning tools can point at the closest source location.

4. Cash out machine-readable output

dollarlint validate . --format json
dollarlint validate . --format sarif --output dollarlint.sarif

Text is the default. JSON and SARIF are requested per run with --format; output files are requested per run with --output.