Quick Start — Manual

Use these steps if you don’t have an AI host, or you want to manage the configuration entirely yourself. Three commands and you’re running lint.

1. Install

The shortest install command is:

npm install -D @contextlint/cli

For bun / pnpm / yarn, see Installation.

2. Generate a config interactively

Running contextlint init walks you through an interactive prompt and produces a contextlint.config.json tailored to your project.

npx contextlint init

After answering the questions, a config file similar to the following is written to the repository root.

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nozomi-koborinai/contextlint/main/schema.json",
  "include": ["docs/**/*.md"],
  "rules": [
    { "rule": "ref001" },
    { "rule": "sec001", "options": { "sections": ["Context", "Decision", "Consequences"] } },
    { "rule": "grp002" }
  ]
}

Each field is described in detail under Configuration. You’re free to edit the file by hand afterwards.

3. Run lint

npx contextlint

contextlint walks up from the current directory looking for contextlint.config.json, and once found, validates Markdown according to its include patterns. Passing target files as CLI arguments overrides the config’s include.

npx contextlint "specs/**/*.md"

Next steps

• Your first lint — how to read the output and common violation patterns
• If you’d rather set up from an AI host, see Quick Start — AI-assisted