How to automate linting your documentation using Vale and Github actions.

Vale is a syntax-aware linter and a command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose, and you can also implement both the Microsoft Writing Style Guide and the Google Developer Documentation Style Guide with it. It’s open-source, fast, and highly customizable. It supports Markdown, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, HTML, and more.

Linting is the process of reviewing your source code or documentation for programmatic and stylistic problems using an automated system. A lint tool is used to accomplish this (otherwise known as linter). A basic static code analyzer is a lint tool.

What does it mean to automate documentation? It means you are using a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline to check for errors and deploy changes and also use a tool like Vale to enforce a style guide and correct grammatical mistakes.

Example:

StylesPath = a/path/to/your/styles
 MinAlertLevel = suggestion
[*]
 BasedOnStyles = Vale

Requirements

• A code editor, like VS Code, Sublime, or Atom
• The Vale-compatible implementation of the Microsoft Style Guide, which you can download here
• The Vale CLI