Validate in CI#

Run Katalyst in continuous integration so malformed frontmatter and non-canonical formatting fail the build instead of reaching main.

Exit codes#

Both gating commands use the same convention:

Gate on validation#

katalyst check over the whole project exits non-zero if any item has a violation:

katalyst check

An item with a violation, here one missing its H1, prints the diagnostic and the run exits 1, the non-zero status that fails the CI step:

<project>/notes/intro.md: OK
<project>/notes/draft.md: /: missing H1 heading in markdown body
exit status 1

Gate on formatting#

katalyst fix --check writes nothing; it lists items whose frontmatter is not canonical and exits 1 if any are found:

katalyst fix --check

It prints one line per non-canonical item and exits 1, writing nothing. Here messy.md has unsorted keys while tidy.md is already canonical:

<project>/notes/messy.md
exit status 1

Example GitHub Actions step#

- name: Validate content
  run: |
    make build
    ./bin/katalyst check
    ./bin/katalyst fix --check

The check step enforces schema and structural checks; the fix --check step enforces canonical frontmatter without modifying files. See Fix for why fix is opinionated and non-destructive in this mode.

See also#

• Configure checks for a collection
• Configuration reference