✅ Validation System¶

Ensure project integrity with LookAtni's comprehensive validation system that checks for missing files, broken links, and structural issues.

Overview¶

The validation system performs multi-layered checks to guarantee that your marker files are complete, accurate, and ready for extraction.

Validation Types¶

🔍 Structural Validation¶

Verifies the overall integrity of marker files:

• Marker format - Correct syntax and structure
• File boundaries - Proper start/end markers
• Encoding - Valid character encoding
• Completeness - All referenced files present

🔗 Dependency Validation¶

Checks relationships between files:

• Import statements - Verify all imports exist
• Asset references - Images, fonts, and media files
• Configuration links - Package.json dependencies
• Internal links - Documentation cross-references

📂 Structure Validation¶

Ensures folder organization integrity:

• Path consistency - No conflicting directory structures
• File naming - Valid filenames for target platform
• Permissions - Extractable permission settings
• Size limits - Files within reasonable size bounds

Running Validation¶

VS Code Command¶

# Validate current project
LookAtni: Validate Markers

# Validate specific marker file
LookAtni: Validate Markers → select file

CLI Validation¶

# Quick validation
lookatni validate project-markers.txt

# Detailed validation with fix suggestions
lookatni validate project-markers.txt --detailed --fix-suggestions

# Validate multiple files
lookatni validate *.txt --batch

Validation Reports¶

Report Structure¶

✅ VALIDATION REPORT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📁 STRUCTURE ANALYSIS
  ✅ 156 files validated
  ✅ 23 directories verified
  ✅ Folder hierarchy intact

🔗 DEPENDENCY ANALYSIS  
  ✅ 45 import statements verified
  ⚠️  2 optional dependencies missing
  ✅ All asset references valid

📋 CONTENT ANALYSIS
  ✅ All file markers complete
  ✅ Encoding validation passed
  ✅ No corruption detected

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎯 RESULT: VALID ✅
📊 Score: 98/100 (Excellent)

Issue Categories¶

Automatic Fixes¶

Self-Healing Features¶

LookAtni can automatically fix many common issues:

# Auto-fix simple issues
lookatni validate project-markers.txt --auto-fix

# Interactive fixing
lookatni validate project-markers.txt --interactive-fix

# Preview fixes without applying
lookatni validate project-markers.txt --dry-fix

Fixable Issues¶

• Path separators - Convert between Windows/Unix paths
• Encoding issues - Fix UTF-8 encoding problems
• Marker boundaries - Repair malformed markers
• Duplicate entries - Remove redundant file entries

Advanced Validation¶

Custom Validation Rules¶

{
  "validation": {
    "maxFileSize": "10MB",
    "allowedExtensions": [".js", ".ts", ".json", ".md"],
    "requiredFiles": ["package.json", "README.md"],
    "bannedPatterns": ["node_modules/**", "*.log"]
  }
}

Batch Validation¶

Validate multiple projects efficiently:

# Validate all marker files in directory
lookatni validate-batch ./marker-files/

# Validate with parallel processing
lookatni validate-batch ./projects/ --parallel=4

# Generate combined report
lookatni validate-batch ./projects/ --report=summary.json

Integration Examples¶

Pre-commit Hooks¶

#!/bin/sh
# .git/hooks/pre-commit
lookatni validate markers/ --strict || exit 1

CI/CD Pipeline¶

name: Validate Markers
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  validate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Install LookAtni CLI
        run: npm install -g lookatni-cli
      - name: Validate all markers
        run: lookatni validate-batch ./markers/ --strict

Automated Testing¶

// Jest test example
import { validateMarkers } from 'lookatni-cli';

test('project markers are valid', async () => {
  const result = await validateMarkers('project-markers.txt');
  expect(result.isValid).toBe(true);
  expect(result.criticalIssues).toHaveLength(0);
});

Performance Monitoring¶

Validation Speed¶

• Small projects (< 100 files) - < 1 second
• Medium projects (< 1000 files) - < 5 seconds
• Large projects (< 10000 files) - < 30 seconds

Memory Usage¶

• Streaming validation - Constant memory footprint
• Large files - Validated in chunks
• Parallel processing - Optimized for multi-core systems

Best Practices¶

Troubleshooting¶

Common Problems¶

# Increase timeout for large projects
lookatni validate project.txt --timeout=300

# Use streaming mode for large files
lookatni validate project.txt --stream

# Normalize paths for cross-platform compatibility
lookatni validate project.txt --normalize-paths

Next: Explore Visual Markers for enhanced VS Code experience.