Skip to content
C3P

c3p validate

c3p validate [<name>] walks the resolver and merger without writing anything. With no name it validates every profile in the project, reporting pass/fail per profile. When a profile is active, it also confirms that project-root CLAUDE.md carries the C3P managed-block markers.

Use validate in CI to catch broken extends/includes references before they trip up an interactive use.

Help

Section titled “Help”
c3p validate — dry-run resolve+merge — I do try to be thorough


USAGE
  c3p validate [<name>] [options]


DESCRIPTION
  Walks the resolver and merger without writing anything. With no name,
  validates every profile in the project and reports pass/fail per profile.
  When a profile is active, also checks that project-root CLAUDE.md has the
  c3p markers (run `init` to add them).


OPTIONS
  --brief            collapse FAIL rows to one line each (CI-friendly)


GLOBAL OPTIONS
  --cwd=<path>     project root (default: cwd)
  --json           machine-readable output (silences human output)
  --quiet, -q      silence human output (preserves errors + exit codes); incompatible with --json


EXAMPLES
  c3p validate              # validate all profiles (full error per FAIL)
  c3p validate dev          # validate just dev
  c3p validate --brief      # one-line FAIL rows (CI scripts)
  c3p validate --json


EXIT CODES
  0  all profiles validated cleanly
  1  project-root CLAUDE.md is missing/malformed c3p markers (run `c3p init`); bad argv
  2  IO fault (read failure on profiles dir or CLAUDE.md)
  3  any profile failed (cycle, missing include, missing extends parent, conflict, unparseable profile.json)

Example

Section titled “Example”
Terminal window
# Validate every profile (CI-friendly)
c3p validate --brief


# Validate one profile, get JSON for downstream tooling
c3p validate dev --json

See also

Section titled “See also”