overwire validate

Validates the whole project in one pass without executing anything: parses every workflow, lints each one, runs static expression analysis (bad needs/steps/matrix references), loads every .overwire/ config file through its real loader, and checks every chain scenario. The fastest pre-run feedback loop for hand-written and generated projects alike.

overwire validate [options] [file]

Arguments

Argument	Description
file	Validate a single workflow file instead of the whole project.

Options

Option	Description
-d, --dir <path>	Workflows directory to scan (default .github/workflows).
--config-root <dir>	Flat .overwire/ directory to derive the workspace from. Enables the config and chain checks.
--json	Emit findings as JSON.

Output

Each finding carries the file, a source (parse, lint, expressions, config, or chain), severity, message, the rule id, the job/step location when known, and a suggested fix. --json wraps them with counts:

{
  "workflowsChecked": 8,
  "configChecked": true,
  "chainsChecked": 2,
  "findings": [],
  "summary": { "errors": 0, "warnings": 0 }
}

Exit codes

0 when no error-severity findings exist (warnings alone pass), 1 when errors were found, 2 for usage problems such as a missing file.

# Whole project
overwire validate --config-root .overwire

# One workflow, machine-readable
overwire validate .github/workflows/ci.yml --json