acton check

Description

Run the Tolk linter on the whole project, a specific contract name from Acton.toml, or a single .tolk file.

By default, Acton checks contracts from Acton.toml together with workspace test files and standalone script roots that define main(). The command also supports machine-readable output formats and rule explanations.

Options

Check Options

Contract name from Acton.toml or path to a .tolk file.

--fix

Apply available fixes automatically.

Works only in plain output mode.

--output-format<format>

Output format for diagnostics.

Possible values:

plain, json, sarif, github, gitlab

--output-file<path>

Write output to a file instead of standard output.

--enable-only<code>[,<code>...]_

Enable only selected lint rules, for example E001,S001.

--explain<code>

Print an explanation for a lint rule.

Display Options

--color<when>

Control when to use colored output.

Possible values:

auto, always, never

Project Options

--manifest-path<path>

Path to the Acton.toml file to use for this invocation.

Use this when running the command outside the project directory or when the manifest lives at a non-default location.

--project-root<path>

Path to the project root to use for configuration discovery and relative defaults.

This conflicts with --manifest-path.

Behavior

--list-lint-rules is a hidden machine-readable helper that prints JSON entries with rule name and markdown description
for a human-readable catalog with rule codes, lifecycle status, and quick-fix availability, use the web rules index
--fix applies edits only in plain output mode
--fix rewrites files only for fixes marked as automatically applicable
when a diagnostic offers multiple fixes, --fix applies only the first one
non-plain output formats report diagnostics without rewriting source files
github emits GitHub Actions workflow annotations
output format resolution is: CLI flag, then [lint].output-format, then default plain
--output-file is not valid with plain format
project-wide mode includes workspace *.test.tolk files and standalone script roots that define main()
project-wide discovery skips built-in directories such as .git, .github, .idea, .acton, node_modules, target, tolk-stdlib, .codex, and .claude
contracts with non-.tolk sources such as precompiled .boc entries are not lint roots
single-file mode relaxes E014 (acton-import-in-contract)
targets ending with .tolk are treated as file paths; other targets are resolved as contract names from Acton.toml
use an explicit .tolk path such as ./contracts/Counter.tolk when a name could be mistaken for a contract name
inline suppressions use rule names, for example // check-disable-next-line unused-variable, write-only-variable
suppressions apply only to the immediately following line and match diagnostic names, including compiler-error and parse-error; diagnostic codes such as C001 are not matched
--fix applies only linter-provided fixes; diagnostics without a safe fix remain in the report
--enable-only is applied after config is loaded: selected rules keep their configured severity, selected rules that were allow are re-enabled at the default severity, and every unselected rule is forced to allow
--enable-only selectors must resolve to exactly one rule; in practice, use full rule codes such as E003 for stability
excluded files still participate in import/type resolution, but lint diagnostics for excluded non-root files are filtered out
explicit targets still run even if they match [lint].exclude
in project-wide runs, excluded contract roots are skipped entirely, so their compiler errors and lint diagnostics are not reported
compiler errors are still shown for roots that are actually checked, including explicit targets
--fix can still exit with status 1 when unfixed diagnostics or warning threshold violations remain after rewriting

Exit Status

0: No lint errors were reported, warning thresholds were respected, and any requested autofixes completed successfully.
1: Lint errors were found, warning limits were exceeded, autofix failed, or configuration/target resolution failed.

Examples

Check the whole project:
```
acton check
```
Check a specific contract by name:
```
acton check Counter
```
Check one file:
```
acton check ./contracts/Counter.tolk
```

Emit SARIF to a file:

acton check --output-format sarif --output-file build/reports/lint.sarif

Run only selected rules:
```
acton check --enable-only E001,S001
```
List rule metadata as JSON:
```
acton check --list-lint-rules
```
Emit GitHub Actions annotations in CI:
```
acton check --output-format github
```
Apply local autofixes where available:
```
acton check --fix
```