Splunk :: Vale linter rules for the Splunk Style Guide

During an internal hackaton at Splunk, I ported most of the Splunk Style Guide to rules for the Vale prose linter, an automated style checker for documentation. This allows writers to check the documentation for many style issues while editing in IDEs for docs-as-code. I initially socialized this feature with editors and the o11y docs team, demoing Vale and the style guide in several forums, including engineering demos.

A sample rule:

extends: sequence
message: "Use %[1]s-%[2]s %[3]s, as %[1]s-%[2]s is an adjective here."
link: 'https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/StyleGuide/current/StyleGuide/Usagedictionary'
level: error
ignorecase: true
tokens:
  - pattern: '(?:back|front)'
  - pattern: 'end'
  - tag: NN

In 2022, to further expand the adoption of Vale at Splunk, I obtained permission to open source the repository, promoting the Splunk style guide and joining an already sizable community of users.

• https://github.com/splunk/vale-splunk-style-guide

To date, Vale is used by many tech writers at Splunk, and is officially endorsed and maintained by in-house editors.