CLI

The contextlint command, provided by the @contextlint/cli package, runs the same way in local development and in CI. A single binary covers config auto-detection, watch mode, and machine-readable JSON output.

For installation, see Get Started → Installation. This page is the entry point for what to do once it’s installed.

Subcommands

Subcommand	Purpose
contextlint (default)	Lint Markdown documents
contextlint init	Generate contextlint.config.json interactively
contextlint compile	Compile documents and rules into a Claude Code SKILL.md
contextlint impact <file>	Analyze which documents are affected by changing a file
contextlint slice <query>	Extract the minimal set of documents related to a query
contextlint graph	Print the document dependency graph

For arguments and options of each subcommand, see Commands.

What’s in this section

• Commands — behavior and usage of lint / init / compile
• Flags reference — --config / --format / --watch / --cwd and friends
• Watch mode — re-lint automatically when files change
• JSON output — the shape of --format json and how to use it in CI

Sanity check

After installation, you can confirm the version with:

npx contextlint --version

--version and --help work without a config file, but actually linting requires contextlint.config.json. For how to write one, see Configuration.