Skip to content

Getting started

This 5-minute walkthrough installs Lintel, wires it into a new Git repository, runs a scan, and explains what happened.

Prerequisites

  • Git 2.30+
  • A Unix-like shell (bash, zsh, or PowerShell on Windows)
  • For live scanning, at least one supported scanner binary on $PATH. The quickstart skips this by disabling scanner-requiring checks; the full installation guide covers the scanners.

1. Install Lintel

Pick the install method that fits your environment. All three produce a lintel binary on $PATH. See installation for pinning a version, alternate install paths, and manual SHA256 / cosign verification.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MHChlagou/lintel/main/scripts/install.sh | sh
lintel version

The script detects your OS and architecture, downloads the release binary, verifies its SHA256, and installs to /usr/local/bin (falling back to $HOME/.local/bin when that is not writable).

go install github.com/MHChlagou/lintel/cmd/lintel@latest
lintel version

iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MHChlagou/lintel/main/scripts/install.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | iex
lintel version

Installs to $env:USERPROFILE\bin\lintel.exe by default. The script prints the command to add that directory to your user PATH if it is not already there.

2. Create a demo repo

mkdir lintel-demo && cd lintel-demo
git init -q
echo "console.log('hello')" > app.js
git add app.js

3. Initialize Lintel

lintel init

This creates .lintel/lintel.yaml with secure defaults. Open it - every section has a comment explaining what it controls. See the configuration guide for the full schema.

4. Install the Git hooks

lintel install

pre-commit and pre-push hooks are now dispatching to lintel run --hook pre-commit and lintel run --hook pre-push. If you had existing hooks, Lintel preserved them (see install docs).

5. Run a scan

For the quickstart we disable the scanners that require external binaries, so the pipeline runs end-to-end with only gofmt-style built-ins available:

# Keep only lint + format enabled for this demo.
sed -i.bak \
  -e '/^  secrets:/,/^  [a-z]/ s/    enabled: true/    enabled: false/' \
  -e '/^  malicious_code:/,/^  [a-z]/ s/    enabled: true/    enabled: false/' \
  -e '/^  dependencies:/,/^  [a-z]/ s/    enabled: true/    enabled: false/' \
  .lintel/lintel.yaml

lintel run --output json | head -20

A successful run exits 0 and prints an empty findings array. If anything is reported, each finding points at the file, line, scanner, rule, and a remediation hint. Exit codes are documented in exit codes.

6. Try a real commit

git add .lintel/
git commit -m "feat: set up lintel"

The pre-commit hook runs Lintel only against the staged files. See the pipeline for what happens inside.

Where to next