Quick Start

July 3, 2026 · View on GitHub

Lint your feature files

Navigate to your Behave project and run:

behave-lint features/

This scans all .feature files under features/ and reports diagnostics to the console.

Filter by severity

By default, behave-lint fails on warnings and errors. Use --fail-on to change the threshold:

# Only fail on errors
behave-lint features/ --fail-on error

# Fail on any diagnostic (including info)
behave-lint features/ --fail-on info

Select specific rules

behave-lint features/ --select BC001,BC004,BS001

Ignore rules

behave-lint features/ --ignore BP001,BP002

Output formats

# JSON
behave-lint features/ --output json

# SARIF (for GitHub Code Scanning)
behave-lint features/ --output sarif

# Markdown report
behave-lint features/ --output markdown --output-file report.md

Auto-fix

Apply safe auto-fixes directly to your feature files:

behave-lint features/ --fix

Include unsafe fixes (e.g. inserting placeholder content):

behave-lint features/ --fix --unsafe-fixes

See the Auto-Fix guide for details.

Watch mode

Re-lint automatically when feature files change:

behave-lint features/ --watch

Requires watchdog — install with pip install behave-lint[watch].

List available rules

behave-lint --list-rules

Explain a specific rule

behave-lint --explain BC004

Next steps