eli

The md linter for Claude skills and elita agents.

Config

eli lints the files you pass. A dir is searched recursively. SKILL.md is a skill. A .md file directly in an agents dir is an agent, for example .claude/agents/x.md. Other .md files are skipped.

Config is a .eli.yml file with four keys:

sections: 7
steps: 7
step: 255
bullet: "-"

Key	Counts	Default
sections	## sections in a file	7
steps	top-level items in a section, bullets and paragraphs alike	7
step	characters in one top-level item, a link counts its label only	255
bullet	the list marker, -, * or +	"-"

Each numeric key takes a number N. A count over N is a finding at N. bullet takes one marker, "-", "*" or "+", and a bullet with another marker is a finding. Any other value is invalid.

Lookup: the first value set wins per key. The order is --config <file>, then each .eli.yml from the current dir up to the root, nearest first, then ~/.claude/skills/.eli.yml, then the defaults.

Output is <path>:<line> <id> <actual> > <max>:

wide/SKILL.md:21 sections 8 > 7
wide/SKILL.md:13 steps 8 > 7

Frontmatter is checked on every file. name is required, max 64 characters. description is required, max 1024 characters. A missing field is a finding, as <path>:1 name missing. Config cannot set or turn these off.

Exit codes:

• 0: clean
• 1: a finding
• 2: an unknown key (for example width or skill) or an invalid value (for example [warn, 2]). With an invalid value, eli checks no files.