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Overview

The CLI output format is Vale’s default output style, providing a human-readable, color-coded display of linting results. This format uses tables to organize alerts and includes visual indicators for different severity levels.
The CLI format is automatically used when running Vale without specifying an output format.

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Output Structure

The CLI output displays alerts grouped by file, with each file’s results shown in a formatted table followed by a summary line.

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Per-File Output

For each file with alerts, Vale displays:
  1. An underlined file path header
  2. A table with columns for:
    • Location: Line and column number (line:column)
    • Severity: Color-coded severity level
    • Message: The alert message
    • Check: The rule name that triggered the alert

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Color Coding

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error
color
Displayed in red. These are critical issues that cause Vale to exit with a non-zero status code.
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warning
color
Displayed in yellow. These are important issues that should be addressed but don’t cause a failing exit code.
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suggestion
color
Displayed in blue. These are optional improvements for your prose.

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Example Output

Here’s what the CLI output looks like when linting a file: 
 /path/to/document.md
 12:1   error      Use 'the' instead of     Vale.Grammar
                   'teh'.
 15:34  warning    Consider using a more    Vale.Readability
                   active voice.
 23:5   suggestion Try using simpler         Vale.SimplerWords
                   alternatives.

✖ 1 error, 1 warning and 1 suggestion in 1 file.
The table columns are automatically sized and aligned for optimal readability. Long messages may wrap depending on terminal width.

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Summary Line

After displaying all file results, Vale prints a summary line with:
  • A checkmark (✔) or X (✖) symbol based on whether errors or warnings were found
  • Total count of errors, warnings, and suggestions
  • Number of files linted

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Success Example

✔ 0 errors, 0 warnings and 3 suggestions in 5 files.

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Failure Example

✖ 2 errors, 5 warnings and 1 suggestion in 3 files.
The summary uses singular or plural forms automatically based on the count (e.g., “1 error” vs “2 errors”).

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Implementation Details

The CLI output is implemented in cmd/vale/color.go:15-85 and uses:
  • pterm library for colored output
  • tablewriter for formatted table rendering
  • Unicode symbols (✔ U+2714, ✖ U+2716) for status indicators
func PrintVerboseAlerts(linted []*core.File, wrap bool) bool {
    var errors, warnings, suggestions int
    
    for _, f := range linted {
        e, w, s := printVerboseAlert(f, wrap)
        errors += e
        warnings += w
        suggestions += s
    }
    
    // Display summary with totals
    etotal := fmt.Sprintf("%d %s", errors, pluralize("error", errors))
    wtotal := fmt.Sprintf("%d %s", warnings, pluralize("warning", warnings))
    stotal := fmt.Sprintf("%d %s", suggestions, pluralize("suggestion", suggestions))
    
    // Choose symbol based on severity
    symbol := "\u2714" // checkmark
    if errors > 0 || warnings > 0 {
        symbol = "\u2716" // X mark
    }
    
    return errors != 0
}

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Configuration Options

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--wrap
boolean
default:"false"
Controls whether text wrapping is enabled in table cells. When disabled, long messages may be truncated to fit the terminal width.

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Using Text Wrapping

vale --wrap document.md
When text wrapping is disabled (default), very long error messages may be truncated to fit within your terminal width.

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Exit Code Behavior

The CLI output format affects Vale’s exit code:
  • Exit 0: No errors found (warnings and suggestions are OK)
  • Exit 1: One or more errors found
This behavior makes Vale suitable for use in CI/CD pipelines where you want builds to fail on errors but not on warnings or suggestions.

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Special Cases

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Standard Input

When linting from standard input, the summary line shows “stdin” instead of file count: 
✖ 1 error, 0 warnings and 0 suggestions in stdin.

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Empty Results

If a file has no alerts, no output is shown for that file. Only the final summary is displayed: 
✔ 0 errors, 0 warnings and 0 suggestions in 3 files.
  • Use --output=JSON for machine-readable output
  • Use --output=line for simple line-based output
  • Use --no-exit to prevent Vale from exiting with error code
  • Use --sort to sort results by file path

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