lintpal

lintpal

lintpal reviews a committed Git comparison with declarative rules and a selected System One provider. It prints a deterministic report of diagnostics anchored to changed lines. The current MVP reads committed blobs only; save and commit the revision you want to inspect before running it.

The first lintpal release is planned as v0.2.0 under the MIT license. Once publication is verified, users will be able to install either npm identity:

npm install -g lintpal@0.2.0
# or
npm install -g @diffpal/lintpal@0.2.0
lintpal version

These registry commands become available only after the release Story finishes; the local build below works now.

The earlier jevlint v0.1.0 tag and six scoped npm packages remain available for existing installs. npm rejected the unscoped jevlint name, so that release did not receive a GitHub release.

Build and try locally

Go 1.26.6 or newer is required by go.mod. From the repository root:

go build -o ./lintpal ./cmd/lintpal
./lintpal version
./lintpal --help
go test ./cmd/lintpal -run TestProcessExitAndStreams -count=1

The process test creates temporary committed Git repositories and a local fake System One server, so the last command needs no provider secret or network account. A plain local build reports version dev. Omnidist staging can embed an explicit version; see distribution staging.

To lint a real comparison, run these commands inside the repository being reviewed after both revisions are committed:

export TYPESAFE_API_KEY='your-token'
./lintpal doctor --provider jev
mkdir -p .artifacts/lintpal
./lintpal lint --base origin/main --head HEAD --provider jev \
  --format json --fail-on high --out .artifacts/lintpal/report.json

Use an absolute path to the built executable when linting another repository. The default provider is jev; openrouter reads OPENROUTER_API_KEY, and custom reads LINTPAL_TOKEN by default and requires --base-url. doctor checks the local Git repository and presence of the selected credential; it does not contact the provider. A real lint sends bounded committed source context and rule questions to the selected provider. See the CLI guide for flags, environment settings, output formats, and exit codes. Exit code 10 means the complete report was written and a finding met --fail-on; it can be used as a CI gate.

CI and reports

The checked-in CI workflow builds and tests on Linux, macOS, and Windows without provider credentials. For a repository using lintpal as a quality gate, install a locally built or separately approved binary in the job, fetch the base revision, provide the selected credential as a CI secret, then run the lint command above with --base and --head set to commits available in that checkout. Handle exit code 10 as a lint failure; other nonzero codes indicate setup, provider, or export failure. Never print the credential or enable shell tracing around it.

The report reference defines the versioned JSON and human formats. Privacy and limitations explains source transfer, local metrics, bounded inputs, and the current quality evidence. The evaluation guide describes the offline corpus and an optional, explicit live procedure.