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contextlint

STR-001 Required files

Overview

Section titled “Overview”

Validates that the project contains every required file. If any path listed in files is missing, an error is reported. This is a project-scope rule and is evaluated across all documents loaded via include.

Why it matters

Section titled “Why it matters”

Documents like README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and docs/architecture.md are entry points that other documents link to under the assumption that they exist. When such anchor files are renamed or deleted, the damage goes beyond broken links — the documentation structure itself starts to fall apart. This rule detects when those entry points are missing.

Options

Section titled “Options”
FieldTypeRequiredDescription
filesstring[]YesArray of file paths required to exist

Each entry in files is compared by exact match against the file list loaded via include. Specify each path relative to the project root.

Bad example

Section titled “Bad example”

With files: ["README.md", "docs/architecture.md"], the missing docs/architecture.md triggers a violation.

project
  line 0  error  Required file "docs/architecture.md" not found  STR-001

After fix

Section titled “After fix”

Creating docs/architecture.md resolves the violation.

Configuration example

Section titled “Configuration example”
{
  "rule": "str001",
  "options": {
    "files": ["README.md", "docs/architecture.md", "CONTRIBUTING.md"]
  }
}
Section titled “Related rules”