validate

validate <files…> reports whether each .feature is well-formed Gherkin and gates on the result: exit 0 when every file parses, exit 1 when any fails. Each failure carries a line number, message, and stable code. This is the CI/gate verb, distinct from parse (which tolerates malformed files as error entries and still exits 0).

gherkin-cli validate features/login.feature

Flags

Flag	Description
--format <fmt>	Output format: toon (default) or json.

Behavior

• Per file: ok plus an errors list of {line, message, code}.
• Aggregate summary {files, errors}.
• Exit 0 iff all files are valid; 1 otherwise.
• An empty result states itself explicitly (0 syntax errors across N file(s)) rather than emitting a blank success.

See also

• parse — project a suite into a compact digest.
• diff — classify scenario changes against a git ref.
• validate — the same check as an imported function.
• AXI output contract — the shared conventions behind this output.