Godlint

One policy engine for every language in your repository.

MIT License · Contributing · Security · Code of Conduct

Pre-alpha: Godlint has an early local CLI and its first cross-language rules. Its public API, configuration format, and rule suites are not stable yet.

Godlint is an open-source, deterministic code-policy engine for polyglot repositories. It will help teams define engineering standards once and enforce them consistently across Rust, TypeScript/JavaScript, and Python.

Godlint is designed for architecture, reliability, test quality, security, and maintainability policies that single-language linters cannot enforce across a whole repository. It will complement established tools such as Clippy, ESLint, Ruff, and Pyright—not replace them.

What Godlint will provide

• One local-first CLI with deterministic pass/fail results.
• Shared policy concepts with language-aware detection.
• Repository and cross-language architecture checks.
• Accountable exceptions: scope, reason, owner, issue, and expiry.
• Gradual adoption through baselines and diff-aware enforcement.
• Terminal, JSON, and SARIF reports for local development and CI.

Initial scope

The first release will focus on Rust, TypeScript/JavaScript, and Python. The planned MVP emphasizes high-confidence rules: file and function size, complexity, centralized configuration, swallowed errors, timeouts, test assertions, policy hygiene, and import cycles.

The project will not use an LLM to decide whether CI passes, replace compilers or formatters, or support arbitrary third-party plugins in its early releases.

Status and roadmap

See the rule roadmap for the rule families, thresholds, and delivery sequence. The implementation sequence is:

1. Workspace, CLI, configuration, diagnostics, fixtures, and documentation.
2. Syntax analysis for all three initial languages and common facts.
3. High-confidence file and repository rules, exceptions, baseline, and SARIF.
4. Caching, architecture graph, and GitHub Actions integration.
5. Optional semantic workers and ecosystem-tool adapters.

Install

A prebuilt binary needs no toolchain. Releases carry Linux and macOS on both architectures, Windows, and a statically linked Linux build for containers without glibc. Download the archive for your platform from the latest release, check it against the .sha256 beside it, and put godlint on your PATH:

tar -xzf godlint-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
install -m 755 godlint /usr/local/bin/

On npm, npm install --save-dev @godlint/cli fetches only the binary for your platform and needs no Rust toolchain, which is the point: Godlint lints JavaScript, TypeScript and Python, and most people working in those languages do not have one. The command it installs is godlint; the package is scoped because npm holds the bare name too close to an existing one.

On PyPI, pip install godlint installs the same binary and likewise needs no Rust toolchain.

With a Rust toolchain, cargo install godlint-cli builds the same binary. The library crate, godlint-core, is published because the command line depends on it; its API is not stable before 1.0.

Use

Godlint enforces nothing until a configuration asks it to. Write godlint.yaml at the repository root and adopt the suite:

version: 1
suites: [recommended@1]

godlint check

check reads the current directory when given no paths. It exits non-zero when a finding is at or above fail-on, which is what makes enforcement one line in CI:

- run: godlint check

check --format decides who is reading. terminal is the default; github emits annotations so findings land on the exact line of a pull request diff; json and sarif are documents for another tool to consume, and both are emitted even when there is nothing to report, because a consumer parses a document rather than prose.

Two commands answer the questions that follow. godlint config validate rejects a configuration before it is trusted, and godlint suppressions lists every exemption with its owner and expiry, so an exception that has outlived its reason fails the build rather than accumulating quietly.

Local development

Godlint currently requires Rust 1.97.1. After installing Rust with rustup, run the same checks used by CI:

cargo fmt --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspace
RUSTDOCFLAGS="-D warnings" cargo doc --workspace --no-deps
cargo run -p godlint-cli -- check .

The initial command shell is available with:

cargo run -p godlint-cli -- --version

Configuration validation is the first implemented product capability:

godlint config validate
godlint config validate --config path/to/godlint.yaml

The check command evaluates the configured rules across Rust, TypeScript/JavaScript, and Python source files. Twenty-one rules are implemented:

• maintainability/file-size — effective lines in a file.
• maintainability/function-size — effective lines in a function.
• maintainability/function-nesting — how deeply control-flow blocks nest inside a function.
• maintainability/parameter-count — declared parameters, excluding a method receiver.
• maintainability/decision-complexity — branch points in a function. A match or switch counts once rather than once per arm, and a guard on an arm counts.
• maintainability/return-count — exit paths from a function, explicit or implicit.
• maintainability/function-statements — statements in a function, through nested blocks but not into nested functions.
• maintainability/empty-function — function bodies that appear unintentionally empty.
• policy/todo-requires-reference — TODO-style markers that need an issue reference.
• style/no-comments — commentary where the code should speak for itself.
• policy/accountable-suppression — inline suppressions that cannot account for themselves.
• policy/unused-suppression — inline suppressions that no longer silence an enabled finding.
• architecture/restricted-call — abrupt process exits, plus configured direct callees outside their approved paths.
• security/no-dynamic-execution — JavaScript eval, Function, and new Function; Python eval and exec.
• security/direct-environment-read — environment access outside a configuration boundary.
• reliability/explicit-timer-delay — JavaScript/TypeScript timers that omit their explicit millisecond delay.
• logging/no-production-log — debug logging outside the paths a repository approves.
• architecture/restricted-import — imports of modules a repository puts behind a boundary.
• architecture/dependency-boundary — a dependency that runs against the declared layer order.
• security/forbidden-dependency — an import of a package the project has ruled out.
• architecture/filename-case — a file name that does not follow the convention for its extension or its declared scope: PascalCase for .tsx/.jsx, kebab-case for other JavaScript and TypeScript, snake_case for Rust and Python.

The call rules read the callee exactly as it is spelled, and the import rules read the module the same way. std::env::var is matched and the aliased env::var after use std::env is not, because knowing they name the same function needs resolution Godlint does not have yet — see the rule roadmap for what that defers. They also have no scope analysis, so a local binding that shadows a restricted name is reported: a Python parameter called exec, or a const process = … in TypeScript. Enable them deliberately; each is off until a repository configures it.

One consequence of built-in restrictions being language-bound is worth knowing before you write a policy: a name a built-in already claims belongs to that built-in's language. Giving sys.exit an allow-in boundary scopes Python's, and a call spelled sys.exit in TypeScript is left alone — there is no language key to say which you meant, so the policy is silent rather than wrong.

A name no built-in claims belongs to no language and applies wherever it is called, which is what a policy about loadConfig means. print, console.log, console.debug and dbg! are now in that group rather than the first: logging/no-production-log owns them as dialect-bound defaults, so naming one under architecture/restricted-call restricts it in every language. Restrict debug logging through the logging rule, which keeps the binding.

A function means the same thing in every language: Rust fn items and closures, Python def functions and lambdas, and JavaScript/TypeScript function declarations, function expressions, methods, and arrow functions. Findings below the configured fail-on severity are reported without failing the command.

godlint check
godlint check crates

Policy suites

A suite names a set of rules and their thresholds so a repository adopts a standard in one line rather than twenty-one:

version: 1
suites:
  - recommended@1

recommended@1 enables every rule at error. Its thresholds are measured rather than borrowed — see the rule roadmap for each number and why.

Suites are opt-in: a configuration that names none enforces nothing. A rules: entry overrides the suite for that rule, in either direction, so a repository can loosen one threshold, tighten it, or decline a rule with severity: off without abandoning the rest.

Accountable exceptions

A single site can be exempted from a rule by a comment that says why, who owns it, and when the exemption lapses:

// godlint-ignore-next-line maintainability/function-size owner=tomer expires=2026-12-31 -- splitting this in #482
fn long_function() {
    // ...
}

godlint-ignore-enclosing applies to the whole function containing it. There is no file-wide form — that is what exclude is for. policy/accountable-suppression reports a directive with no reason, an unknown rule, or an expiry in the past; and policy/unused-suppression reports one that no longer hides an enabled finding. Neither policy rule can be suppressed. List every exemption in the repository with:

godlint suppressions

See inline suppression for the full syntax and semantics.

Contributing

We welcome early design feedback, rule ideas backed by concrete examples, parser and performance research, documentation improvements, and eventually implementation contributions. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and abide by the Code of Conduct.

Please do not file security vulnerabilities in public issues; use the process in SECURITY.md.

License

Godlint is released under the MIT License.