⚠️ Deprecation Notice

AutoRest and its plugins are deprecated and will be retired on July 1, 2026.

AutoRest is no longer under active development. No new features, language generators, or plugins will be added.

✅ Recommended replacement: TypeSpec

The recommended successor to AutoRest is TypeSpec — a modern, actively developed API description language and code generation platform.

⚠️ No new linting rule will be accepted. For azure ecosystem add TypeSpec rules here https://github.com/azure/typespec-azure

azure-openapi-validator

For a deep-dive on this tool, please see https://aka.ms/lintdiff.

azure-openapi-validator, aka LintDiff, is a linter for Azure OpenAPI specifications. It is an extension of autorest and supports spectral lint rule format. This repo also contains all the automated linter rules that apply to the API specs in the azure-rest-api-specs.

Executed validation rules

Please refer to rules.md.

Contributing

• If you want to submit a new rule request or bug, please file an issue. Prefix the title with [LintDiff].

• If you want to submit changes to this repository, including contributing new linter rules, check out CONTRIBUTING.md.

Submitting PRs, building, testing, running locally

Please see the Contributing section above.

Packages

Name	Latest
AutoRest extension
openapi-validator	https://www.npmjs.com/package/@microsoft.azure/openapi-validator
core functionality
openapi-validator-core	https://www.npmjs.com/package/@microsoft.azure/openapi-validator-core
ruleset
openapi-validator-rulesets	https://www.npmjs.com/package/@microsoft.azure/openapi-validator-rulesets

Troubleshooting

There is no troubleshooting guide available at this time.