Linting Basics

Pickier’s linter is opinionated but lightweight. It focuses on practical checks and provides a plugin surface for additional rules.

Core checks

• noDebugger (configurable severity): flags debugger statements and auto-fixes them when --fix is used
• noConsole (configurable severity): flags console.* usage
• Quote preference diagnostics (TS/JS): warns when string quotes do not match format.quotes
• Indentation diagnostics (TS/JS): warns when indentation is not a multiple of format.indent or when tabs are used

Optional heuristics via rules:

• noCondAssign: flags assignments in the conditional segment of if, while, and for statements
• noTemplateCurlyInString: flags template literal syntax (${...}) in regular strings
• noUnusedCapturingGroup: flags regex literals with capturing groups that are not referenced (heuristic)

Built-in plugin rules

Enable via pluginRules in your config. See the Rules pages for details and examples:

• /rules/sort-objects

• /rules/sort-imports

• /rules/sort-named-imports

• /rules/sort-heritage-clauses

• /rules/sort-keys

• /rules/sort-exports

• /rules/style-max-statements-per-line

• /rules/no-unused-vars

• /rules/regexp-no-super-linear-backtracking

• /rules/prefer-const

• sort-objects: object literal key ordering checks

• sort-imports: flags when the import block would be changed by the formatter

• sort-named-imports: named specifiers within a single import statement must be sorted

• sort-heritage-clauses: sorts TypeScript extends/implements

• sort-keys: ESLint-like object key sort check

• sort-exports: sorts contiguous export groups

• max-statements-per-line: enforces at most N statements per line

• no-unused-vars: detects declared but unused variables/parameters (with ignore patterns)

• no-super-linear-backtracking: flags regex patterns that may catastrophically backtrack

See Advanced » Plugin System for options.

Inline disables

You can suppress issues for the next line using either ESLint-style or Pickier-style prefixes:

// eslint-disable-next-line no-console, quotes
console.log("x")

// pickier-disable-next-line sort-objects
const obj = { b: 1, a: 2 }

// eslint-disable-next-line pickier/sort-objects
const obj2 = { y: 1, x: 2 }

// pickier-disable-next-line ts/no-require-imports
const fs = require('node:fs')

Notes:

• When no rule list is provided, all rules for the next line are suppressed.
• Rule matching accepts both prefixed and bare IDs (e.g., sort-objects or pickier/sort-objects).
• Block comment form is also supported on a single line: /* eslint-disable-next-line no-console */.

CLI usage

# scan with stylish reporter (default)
pickier lint .

# auto-fix (removes debugger statements); then re-check issues
pickier lint src --fix

# simulate fixes without writing (logs a message per changed file when verbose)
pickier lint . --fix --dry-run --verbose

# fail when any warning is present
pickier lint . --max-warnings 0

# JSON reporter for CI
pickier lint . --reporter json > lint.json

# compact reporter (one-line per issue)
pickier lint . --reporter compact

Reporters

• stylish (default): grouped by file with colored severities
• json: machine-readable object with errors, warnings, and issues
• compact: single line per issue (path:line:col severity rule message)

Stylish example

src/index.ts
error  12:3  no-debugger  Unexpected debugger statement.
warn   18:5  no-console   Unexpected console usage.

Configuration

Excerpt:

import type { PickierConfig } from 'pickier'

export default {
  rules: {
    noDebugger: 'error',
    noConsole: 'warn',
    // noCondAssign: 'warn',
    // noUnusedCapturingGroup: 'off',
  },
  pluginRules: {
    'pickier/no-unused-vars': ['error', { varsIgnorePattern: '^_', argsIgnorePattern: '^_' }],
    'style/max-statements-per-line': ['warn', { max: 1 }],
  },
} satisfies PickierConfig

Examples

noDebugger with --fix

Before:

function load() {
  debugger
  return 42
}

After pickier lint . --fix:

function load() {
  return 42
}

Quote and indent diagnostics

Given quotes: 'single' and indent: 2, the linter will warn on lines like:

const a = "hello"  // prefer single quotes
   doThing()       // tabs not allowed; indent must be multiple of 2 spaces

Best practices

• Start with reporter: stylish locally and reporter: compact in CI
• Set --max-warnings 0 in CI to keep the bar high, while tuning rule severities in your config
• Use _ prefixes (or project-specific patterns) with pickier/no-unused-vars to allow intentionally unused names
• Pair the linter with the formatter so code style is both enforced and auto-corrected where safe

Troubleshooting

• “Why did a variable get flagged unused?” — ensure it’s referenced beyond its declaration; destructuring keys also count as names
• “Regex flagged for backtracking” — simplify overlapping .*/.+ constructs or add anchors/limits