Defame1297
ca744d5d6c
Gotcha 1 said a style in BasedOnStyles that is not built-in and not already under StylesPath "finds nothing until vale sync fetches it — a clean run is not proof anything linted". Reproduced against vale 3.15.2: that case is a hard `E100 [loadStyles] style '<name>' does not exist on StylesPath`, exit 2. Nothing is linted and nothing is silent. Worse, the same commit deleted the Gotcha that was the actual diagnostic — that Packages and BasedOnStyles are separate keys and a style lints only once it is in both. So the surviving rule sent a reader staring at E100 to run `vale sync`, which fetches only what Packages declares and reports "Synced 0 package(s)" against a BasedOnStyles-only name. The remediation loop did not terminate. Reproduced end to end. The genuinely silent case is the reverse — declared in Packages and synced, but absent from BasedOnStyles — and it is now the one labelled as such. Testing also turned up that StylesPath must exist as a directory even when Vale is the only style (E201, exit 2), which was documented nowhere. references/configuration-reference.md gains a seven-row resolution matrix, each row backed by a fixture. Its Frontmatter Scopes section claimed provenance from the vale.sh research corpus, which contains no frontmatter material at all; it is house-verified and now says so under its own slug. Issue #99's wave-3 comment recorded this defect as found and repaired. It was not — the file was byte-identical to the commit that introduced it, so nothing here was treated as already correct. Refs #99
vale-config
Install and configure Vale, the prose/style linter — .vale.ini, StylesPath, built-in/third-party/custom styles, and activation via BasedOnStyles.
What it does
Covers the setup side of Vale: getting a project from no config to a working .vale.ini where vale sync runs clean and every declared style is actually activated for the right files. Does not run Vale or interpret its output — see vale-run for that.
Usage
/vale-config
Describe what you want configured: initial setup, adding a third-party style package, or a custom rule. The skill covers install, StylesPath layout, .vale.ini structure, and BasedOnStyles activation.
Files
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
SKILL.md |
Skill instructions for agents |
references/configuration-reference.md |
Full .vale.ini fields, rule-header fields, and frontmatter-scope behaviour |
references/sources.md |
Research sources backing the Vale configuration guidance |