Check a SvelteKit frontend

You have a SvelteKit frontend and want chisel-js to find architecture violations in it. This guide installs the TypeScript CLI, runs a check, and explains how to read the output.

Install

npm install -g chisel-js      # or: bun add -g chisel-js
chisel-js --version

Requires Node 20+. Runtime deps (chalk, commander, estree-walker, fast-glob, svelte, typescript) install automatically — TypeScript is used to parse and resolve your imports, so it ships with the CLI.

Initialise

Run init once. It works out which topology your project has and writes chisel.config.json:

chisel-js init ./your-frontend

Mode	What it means
sveltekit-standalone	SvelteKit owns its data layer — Drizzle under $lib/server, no separate backend
sveltekit-bff	SvelteKit fronts a separate API through a generated openapi-fetch client

The mode decides which rules apply: a standalone app has repositories and remote functions, a BFF has a generated API client. Detection runs only here — from then on check reads the file, so the rule set can’t change because someone edited a dependency. Override with --mode sveltekit-bff if the guess is wrong.

check still works without a config; it detects a mode, says so, and suggests running init.

Run a check

Point chisel-js check at your project root. Default path is ..

chisel-js check ./your-frontend

Non-zero exit on any ERROR-level violation. That’s what makes it safe to gate commits and CI on.

No --strict flag

Unlike the Python CLI, chisel-js has no --strict flag. The project-structure rules (pnpm-only, env-file separation, etc.) are always on.

Read the output

Coloured, grouped by category, one block per violation. Each violation names the file, line, rule ID, and a short message.

chisel-js check ./your-frontend

For scripts, agents, or CI, ask for JSON; see Understand a violation for how to read the deduplicated --json output.

Unresolved imports are reported

chisel-js builds a real import graph, resolving $lib and relative specifiers against your tsconfig. A specifier that resolves to nothing is reported as import-boundary:unresolved-import — a dangling import is broken and invisible to every layer rule, so it hides violations as well as being a bug.

If $lib imports come back unresolved across the board, run svelte-kit sync to generate .svelte-kit/tsconfig.json, which is where SvelteKit puts the alias definitions.

What’s next

• Understand a violation: read a rule’s description and fix guidance with chisel-js explain.
• Turn off a rule for a file: exempt legacy files or justified exceptions.
• Block violations before commit: wire chisel-js into a pre-commit hook.
• TypeScript rules reference: every rule, grouped by category.