Check a changeset

Select the changes to score, interpret severity and confidence separately, and keep the human decision explicit.

argot check scores a selected changeset against a fitted repository voice. It is the full local check: skills, MCP, hooks, and CI do not silently broaden a selected changeset into an automatic acceptance-time check.

argot check                         # all uncommitted modified, staged, and untracked changes
argot check --staged                # staged changes only
argot check --unstaged              # unstaged changes only
argot check HEAD~5                  # current state compared with a ref
argot check HEAD~5..HEAD            # commits in a range
argot check --commit abc1234        # one commit
argot check --format json           # stable machine-readable document

--only and --exclude narrow the selected paths; --exclude wins when both match. Machine formats are json, sarif, and github; human output is the default. The JSON schema is versioned with the release, so consumers should read the schema version rather than infer one from prose.

Read the result

Exit 0 means no error-severity finding was reported. Exit 1 means at least one error-severity finding needs review. Exit 2 means setup or command usage failed. --error-on-warnings makes warning-severity findings exit non-zero for a deliberately strict invocation.

Severity controls the exit behavior. Confidence (unusual, suspicious, or foreign) describes the strength of the evidence for display and filtering; it does not decide whether the command fails. A clean run means none of the configured checks fired, not that every choice matches the repository’s conventions.

For every hit, read its rule and evidence. In particular, compare a redundant finding with the named existing function, and treat an intentional exception as a human decision. A durable mute requires a meaningful reason:

argot mute <hash> --reason "intentional parallel implementation"     # this hit only
argot mute --path 'src/legacy/**' --rule redundant --reason "…"      # a standing rule

A hash mute covers that hit alone — the same finding in a sibling file has its own hash. Reach for --path when the decision covers a tree, or you will be committing one mute per file.

Adopting on a codebase that already has findings

Fitting a repository with history means check will surface findings that predate your decision to use Argot. Choose a starting line deliberately:

argot check --add-ignores     # working tree only

This writes an inline ignore comment above every finding that exists today, so only new code is judged from here. It is the right move for a mature codebase adopting Argot without a cleanup project first. The alternative is to fix or mute what is there now, which suits a smaller or younger repository.

Those ignores are a snapshot, not a verdict. Re-score them periodically — Argot can report which suppressions no longer fire — or the baseline quietly becomes permanent and hides regressions in the code it covered.

See Configure for severities, machine-format fields, inline suppressions, and locked rules.