Redocly CLI Contributing Guide

Hi! We're really excited that you are interested in contributing to Redocly CLI. Before submitting your contribution though, please make sure to take a moment and read through the following guidelines.

If you're contributing with an AI assistant, make sure it follows the guidelines in AGENTS.md. Most tools pick it up automatically; if yours doesn't, point it at the file. Issue comments and discussion replies are expected to be written in the contributor's own words rather than generated by AI.

• Issue reporting guidelines
• Pull request guidelines
• Development guidelines
  • Commonly used NPM scripts
  • Logging
  • Built-in rules changes
  • Update Redoc
  • Arguments usage
  • Exit codes
  • Local source code usage
• Tests
• Contribute documentation
• Contribute to the cookbook
• Project structure
• Release flow

Issue reporting guidelines

• Before opening a new issue, try to make sure the same problem or idea hasn't already been reported. You can do that on the Issues page in the repository and using the filter is:issue combined with some keywords relevant to your idea or problem. It helps us notice that more people have the same issue or use case, and reduces the chance of getting your issue marked as a duplicate. Plus, you can even find some workarounds for your issue in the comments of a previously reported one!

• The best way to get your bug fixed is to provide a (reduced) test case. List and explain the steps we should take to try and hit the same problem you're having. It helps us understand in which conditions the issue appears, and gives us a better idea of what may be causing it.

• Abide by our Code of Conduct in all your interactions on this repository, and show patience and respect to other community members.

Pull request guidelines

Before submitting a pull request, please make sure the following is done:

1. Pull/fork the repository and create your branch from main.
2. Run npm install in the repository root.
3. If you've fixed a bug or added code that should be tested, don't forget to add tests!
4. Ensure the test suite and lint checks pass (npm run test and npm run lint).
5. It's your responsibility to ensure your contribution does not violate copyright laws.
6. Each feat/fix PR should also contain a changeset (to create one, run npx changeset). If your changes are scoped to packages/core or packages/respect-core but also affect Redocly CLI behavior, include the @redocly/cli package as well. Describe what you've done in this PR using sentence case (you can refer to our changelog). This creates a file in the .changeset folder. Commit this file with your changes. If the PR doesn't need a changeset (for example, it is a small change, or updates only documentation), add the no changeset needed label to the PR.
7. Use the Conventional Commits format for commit messages.

Please do not modify the PR template.

Maintainers (when merging): remove redundant intermediate commit descriptions and keep the main commit description (plus co-authors if needed). If several commit descriptions should be preserved, rebase instead of squashing.

Experimental features

We accept contributions for experimental features, but they should be clearly marked as such in the documentation and changeset. Checklist for experimental features:

1. Clean code isolation (preferably one entrypoint to the existing code).
2. Reuse of existing approaches, concepts, patterns, types, functions, and constants (such as walker, NodeType, detectSpec, isRef, etc.).
3. No unnecessary concept duplication.
4. Clean, concise docs.
5. No excessive unit tests (especially testing internal implementation details), prefer e2e. You can request the coverage threshold adjustment if needed.

Development guidelines

Node.js at v22.12.0+ and NPM v11+ are required.

After forking the repo, run:

npm install # or npm i

Commonly used NPM scripts

To compile the code, run npm run compile.

To run a specific CLI command, use npm run cli, e.g. npm run cli -- lint resources/museum.yaml --format=stylish. Notice that the extra -- is required to pass arguments to the CLI rather than to NPM itself.

Format your code with npm run format before committing.

Check the Tests section for the test commands reference.

There are some other scripts available in the scripts section of the package.json file.

Logging

When contributing to Redocly CLI, it's important to follow these logging guidelines:

1. Use the built-in logger from @redocly/openapi-core package:

   import { logger } from '@redocly/openapi-core';
   

2. All informational messages, warnings, and errors should be written to stderr using the appropriate logger methods:

   • logger.info() for general information
   • logger.warn() for warnings
   • logger.error() for errors

3. Only write to stdout when the output is meant to be consumed by other applications or tools (like when piping to jq or other CLI tools). This includes:

   • command output that needs to be parsed
   • interactive outputs (like login/logout responses)
   • data that needs to be piped to other commands

   logger.output(JSON.stringify(stats, null, 2));
   

4. Avoid using console.log, console.error, or direct process.stdout.write/process.stderr.write calls. Always use the logger methods to ensure consistent output formatting and proper stream usage.

Built-in rules changes

After adding a new rule, make sure it is added to the minimal, recommended, recommended-strict (the same as the previous but with warnings turned into error), spec, and all rulesets with appropriate severity levels. The defaults are off or warn for minimal and recommended and error for all. Also add the rule to the built-in rules list in the config types tree.

If the rule reflects a specification requirement, prefix it with spec- and add it to the spec ruleset. If a rule already exists for another specification flavor, reuse the existing name so the same concept stays discoverable across specs.

Separately, open a pull request with the corresponding documentation changes. To make changes to documentation:

1. Create a new page for the rule in the docs/@v2 folder.
2. Add the link to the rule page to the built-in rules list and the sidebar.
3. Update the rulesets pages and ruleset templates.

Update Redoc

When updating Redoc, recompute the subresource integrity SRI (redocStandaloneSri in package.ts):

openssl dgst -sha384 -binary node_modules/redoc/bundles/redoc.standalone.js | openssl base64 -A

The SRI value also appears in e2e test snapshots — update those too.

Arguments usage

There are three ways of providing arguments to the CLI: environment variables, command line arguments, and a Redocly configuration file.

Environment variables

Environment variables should be used to provide some arguments that are common for all the commands. We always prefer configuration over environment variables. Environment variables should not affect the core package logic.

Command line arguments

Use them to provide some arguments that are specific to a certain command. Think of them as modifiers. They should not affect the core package logic.

Configuration file

The redocly.yaml file is the most flexible way of providing arguments. Please use it to provide arguments that are common for all the commands, for a specific command, or for a specific API. It could be used for providing arguments for both cli and core packages. Please refer to the configuration file documentation for more details.

Exit codes

The application maintains the following exit codes.

Exit code	Description
0	Success
1	Command execution error
2	Config resolution failure

Local source code usage

There are two options for testing local changes in other local applications:

• NPM linking
• local packing and installing from the redocly-cli.tgz file

NPM linking

To test the local source code of the packages in other local applications, you can use npm linking. To learn how to use npm linking, see the offical docs.

Local packing and installing

To test local changes as a package, you can use the following steps:

1. (Optional) Change the version of the packages.

2. Run npm run pack:prepare in the repository's root. This command generates redocly-cli.tgz, respect-core.tgz, openapi-core.tgz, and client-generator.tgz files.

3. Copy these .tgz files to a destination folder and then run npm install redocly-cli.tgz there to install Redocly CLI. To install openapi-core: repeat this step, but with openapi-core.tgz file. Apps that consume a runtime: package generated client install client-generator.tgz the same way.

Tests

When running tests, make sure the code is compiled (npm run compile). Having redocly.yaml in the root of the project affects the unit tests, and console logs affect the e2e tests, so make sure to get rid of both before running tests. Run npm test to start both unit and e2e tests (and additionally typecheck the code).

Unit tests

Run unit tests with this command: npm run unit. This command runs the suite for every package whose tests match the discovery glob — there is no per-package npm test script.

Unit tests in the cli package are sensitive to top-level configuration file (redocly.yaml).

• To run tests from a single file, run: npm run unit -- <path/to/your/file.test.ts>
• To run a specific test, use this command: npm run unit -- -t 'Test name'.
• To update snapshots, run npm run unit -- -u.
• To skip coverage, run the command with --coverage=false.

E2E tests

Run e2e tests with this command: npm run e2e.

E2E tests are sensitive to any additional output (like console.log) in the source code.

To update snapshots, run npm run e2e -- -u.

The e2e tests are written and run with Vitest. They live under tests/e2e/, grouped by command.

Note that the snapshot does not always match the command output because of the way stdout and stderr are combined in getCommandOutput. This is intentional so outputs stay consistent for snapshot testing. The order of stdout and stderr in a snapshot may differ from what you see in the terminal, but the combined output is stable.

Smoke tests

Smokes are for testing the CLI in different environments.

To run them locally, please follow the steps described in the smoke GitHub actions: smoke-basic, smoke-plugins, smoke-rebilly.

To update smoke tests for the build-docs command (which sometimes fails due to external package updates), please follow the steps below:

# Build and install the current CLI build locally
npm run compile
npm run pack:prepare
npm i -g redocly-cli.tgz

# Re-build the docs
(cd tests/smoke/basic/ && redocly build-docs openapi.yaml -o pre-built/redoc.html)

Don't forget to visually check the changes in a browser. For other commands you'd have to do something similar.

Performance benchmark

To run the performance tests locally, you should have hyperfine (v1.16.1+) installed on your machine. Prepare the local build, go to the tests/performance folder, clean it up, do the preparations:

(npm run compile && npm run pack:prepare && cd tests/performance/ && git clean -dX -f . && git clean -dX -ff .  && rm -rf node_modules && rm -f package-lock.json && npm i && npm run make-test)

and run the actual test:

(cd tests/performance/ && npm run test)

You might need to adjust the CLI versions that need to be tested in the tests/performance/package.json file. There are also other commands available for your convenience to test specific commands like lint or check-config.

Manual tests

What should be verified when changes are applied to the respect-core package:

• mTLS is working. Can be done by calling API endpoint with mTLS authentication npm run cli respect {YOUR}.arazzo.yaml -- --verbose --mtls=='{"domain":{"caCert":"ca-cert.pem", "clientKey":"client-key.pem","clientCert":"client-cert.pem"}}'. Learn more about mTLS usage in Respect.
• File upload is working for both multipart/form-data and application/octet-stream.

Contribute documentation

Additions and updates to our documentation are very welcome. You can find the documentation in the docs/ folder, and this is published to https://redocly.com/docs/cli/ as part of our main website.

To preview your documentation changes locally:

1. Make sure redocly is already installed on your local computer. See installation.

2. Run this command from the docs/ folder:

   redocly preview
   

By default, you can access the docs preview at http://localhost:4000 or http://127.0.0.1:4000.

Currently, the custom Markdoc tags used in the main website are not available in the local preview version, and links that point to the wider website do show as errors when using a local platform. Pull request workflows generate full previews: you will be able to check if everything is in good shape before we review and merge your changes.

Prose linting

We are proud of our docs. When you open a pull request, we lint the prose using Vale. You can also install this tool locally and run it from the root of the project with:

vale README.md docs/ .changeset

The configuration is in .vale.ini in the root of the project.

Markdown linting

We use Markdownlint to check that the Markdown in our docs is well formatted (config: .markdownlint.yaml). The checks run on pull requests; locally, from the repository root:

npx markdownlint-cli2 "docs/**/*.md"

Note that formatter also runs and reformats Markdown files. Use npm run format from the root of the project.

Please use semantic line breaks in markdown files (preferably splitting sentences into separate lines).

Markdown link checking

We use mlc to check the links in the docs/ folder. This tool runs automatically on every pull request, but you can also run it locally if you want to. Visit the project homepage to find the installation instructions for your platform, and then run the command like this:

mlc docs/

The tool only checks links within the local docs (it can't check links to other docs sections that are present when we publish all products under https://redocly.com/docs), and doesn't currently check anchors. Take care when renaming pages or titles.

Contribute to the Cookbook

The Cookbook is a community collection of rulesets, configuration, custom plugins, and other Redocly CLI additions. Unlike the packages, it is not built or tested as part of the CLI — treat every entry as a shared example that people use at their own risk. A Cookbook-only change does not affect the published packages, so it does not need a changeset; add the no changeset needed label to the pull request instead.

To add an entry:

1. Pick the top-level category under cookbook/ that fits best (rulesets, configurable-rules, custom-plugins, custom-plugin-decorators, custom-plugin-rules, or miscellaneous), and create a directory inside it named for what you are adding. Give it a meaningful name — people browse the collection this way.

   cookbook
   └── configurable-rules
       └── endpoints-are-tagged-cupcake
   

2. Put the file or files you want to share into the new directory, and name them so others can reuse and understand them.

3. Add a README.md to the directory that explains the problem the entry solves and any context a reader needs to reuse it successfully. Follow the structure of the existing entries.

4. List your entry in the relevant section of the Cookbook catalog.

5. Open a pull request. Someone from Redocly will review it, suggest changes if needed, and merge it once it is ready.

Project structure

• tests/e2e: contains e2e tests.

• tests/performance: contains the performance benchmark.

• tests/smoke: contains smoke tests.

• docs: contains the documentation source files. When changes to the documentation are merged, they automatically get published on the Redocly docs website.

• packages: contains the source code. It consists of three packages - CLI, core, and respect-core. The codebase is written in Typescript.

  • packages/cli: contains Redocly CLI commands and utils. More details in the README file.

    • packages/cli/src: contains CLI package source code.
      • packages/cli/src/commands: contains CLI commands functions.

  • packages/core: contains Redocly CLI core functionality like rules, decorators, etc.

    • packages/core/src: contains core package source code.
      • packages/core/src/config: contains the base configuration options.
      • packages/core/src/decorators: contains the built-in decorators code.
      • packages/core/src/format: contains the format options.
      • packages/core/src/js-yaml: contains the JS-YAML based functions.
      • packages/core/src/rules: contains the built-in rules code.
      • packages/core/src/types: contains the common types for several OpenAPI versions.
      • packages/core/src/typings: contains the common Typescript typings.

  • packages/respect-core: contains the Respect core package.

• resources: contains some example API descriptions and configuration files that might be useful for testing.

• cookbook: contains the community cookbook — shared rulesets, configuration, custom plugins, and other Redocly CLI additions. It is not part of the build or test suite.

Release flow

We use Changesets flow. After merging a PR with a changeset, the release PR is automatically created.

If the pipelines are not starting, close and reopen the PR. Merging that PR triggers the release process.

Revert a release

There's no possibility to revert a release itself. However, you can release a new version with a problematic commit reverted.

1. Create a new branch from main.
2. Find the hash of the commit you want to revert and run git revert <commit-hash>.
3. Create a patch-level changeset for the revert and open a PR with it.
4. Merge the PR and cut a release according to the Release flow.

Snapshot release

To release an experimental version to the NPM registry, follow these steps:

1. Create a new PR to main.
2. Add the snapshot label to the PR. This triggers a release of the current branch changes to the NPM registry under the snapshot tag.

The released version can be installed with npm install @redocly/cli@snapshot.

Release a V1 version

Redocly CLI v1 is currently in archive mode, but still can receive bug fixes.

To release a new version, switch to the v1 branch and follow the steps described in the Contribution guide (the CONTRIBUTING.md file).