Rulens

No more maintaining coding guidelines. Your linter rules to AI instructions, instantly.

Rulens is a CLI tool that extracts and formats linting rules into Markdown documentation. It analyzes your project's Biome and ESLint configurations and generates comprehensive documentation of all active linting rules with descriptions.

Why Rulens?

• AI-Ready Code Generation: Help AI coding assistants understand your project's coding standards before generating code
• Consistent Code Quality: Eliminate the cycle of writing code → running linters → fixing errors by teaching the standards upfront
• Automatic Documentation: Keep your linting documentation perfectly in sync with your actual configuration

Core Features

• Automatically documents linting rules from your project configuration
• Supports both Biome and ESLint
• Includes detailed descriptions for each rule with links to official documentation
• Organizes rules by category with clear category explanations
• Provides consistent Markdown formatting suitable for documentation and AI input

Prerequisites

Rulens works with existing linting configurations in your project:

• Node.js: Version 20.0.0 or higher is required
• Biome: If you want to extract Biome rules, Biome should be installed in your project
• ESLint: If you want to extract ESLint rules, ESLint should be installed in your project

Rulens will automatically detect and use the appropriate linting tools from your project's node_modules/.bin directory. If not found, it will attempt to use globally installed versions.

Getting Started

Installation

# Using npm
npm install -D rulens

# Using pnpm
pnpm add -D rulens

# Using yarn
yarn add -D rulens

Quick Start

Run this command in your project root to generate the documentation:

npx rulens generate

That's it! You'll find a docs/lint-rules.md file containing your linting rules in an AI-friendly format.

AI Integration

Add this prompt directive to your AI coding assistant instructions for immediate awareness of your coding standards:

IMPORTANT: Read coding guidelines in docs/lint-rules.md before beginning code work

This simple instruction helps AI tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, and other assistants to follow your project's linting standards from the start.

See also docs/lint-rules.md and CLAUDE.md in the rulens project.

Usage

Generate Command

The generate command creates Markdown documentation from your linting configuration:

# Basic usage - generates Markdown at docs/lint-rules.md
rulens generate

# Custom output path
rulens generate --output custom-path.md

# Custom ESLint config path
rulens generate --eslint-config custom-eslint.config.js

# Pass additional arguments to biome
rulens generate --biome-args "--somearg value"

Lint Command

The lint command verifies that your documentation is up-to-date with your current configuration:

# Basic usage - verifies docs/lint-rules.md is up-to-date
rulens lint

# With auto-update
rulens lint --update

# Custom options
rulens lint --output custom-path.md --verbose

If the documentation is out of date, the command exits with code 1, causing your CI build to fail.

Command Options Reference

Generate Command Options

Lint Command Options

* ESLint config is auto-detected in the following order:

1. JavaScript formats: eslint.config.js, eslint.config.mjs, eslint.config.cjs
2. TypeScript formats: eslint.config.ts, eslint.config.mts, eslint.config.cts
3. Legacy formats: .eslintrc.js, .eslintrc.json, .eslintrc.yaml, .eslintrc.yml, .eslintrc

CI/CD Integration

Rulens provides built-in support for CI/CD pipelines through the lint command, which verifies that your documentation is up-to-date with your actual configuration. The command exits with code 1 when documentation is out of date, making it ideal for CI pipelines.

CI Implementation Examples

GitHub Actions - Verification Workflow

name: Verify Lint Rules Documentation

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
    paths:
      - ".eslintrc*"
      - "eslint.config.*"
      - "biome.json"
      - "package.json"
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]
    paths:
      - ".eslintrc*"
      - "eslint.config.*"
      - "biome.json"
      - "package.json"

jobs:
  verify-docs:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: "20"
          cache: "npm"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Verify lint rules documentation
        run: npx rulens lint

GitLab CI Example

verify-lint-docs:
  stage: test
  script:
    - npm ci
    - npx rulens lint
  only:
    changes:
      - .eslintrc*
      - eslint.config.*
      - biome.json
      - package.json

GitHub Actions - Auto-update Workflow

For automatically updating documentation and creating a commit:

name: Update Lint Rules Documentation

on:
  push:
    paths:
      - ".eslintrc*"
      - "eslint.config.*"
      - "biome.json"
      - "package.json"

jobs:
  update-docs:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20"
      - run: npm install
      - name: Update lint rules documentation if needed
        run: npx rulens lint --update
      - name: Check for changes
        id: git-check
        run: |
          git diff --exit-code docs/lint-rules.md || echo "changes=true" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
      - name: Commit changes if needed
        if: steps.git-check.outputs.changes == 'true'
        run: |
          git config --local user.email "actions@github.com"
          git config --local user.name "GitHub Actions"
          git add docs/lint-rules.md
          git commit -m "docs: update lint rules documentation"
          git push

Additional Integration Options

Pre-commit Hook Integration

You can use Rulens with pre-commit hooks to ensure documentation stays up-to-date locally:

# Using Husky
npx husky add .husky/pre-commit "npx rulens lint --update"

Best Practices

1. Always run in CI: Even with pre-commit hooks, run verification in CI to catch changes from all contributors
2. Consider auto-update workflows: For larger teams, set up workflows that automatically create PRs when documentation needs updating
3. Include in code review: When reviewing PRs that change linting rules, verify documentation has been updated
4. Keep in sync with code: Update documentation alongside rule changes, not as an afterthought

Development

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Build
pnpm build

# Development with watch mode
pnpm dev

# Run tests
pnpm test

# Run tests with coverage
pnpm test:coverage

# Run tests with coverage and generate badge
pnpm test:coverage:badge

# Format code
pnpm fmt

# Lint code
pnpm lint

Roadmap

• Support for additional linting tools (Prettier, Stylelint, etc.)
• ESLint rule description crawling for more consistent documentation
• Custom templates for different documentation formats

License

MIT

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests.