pseolint

The only tool purpose-built for programmatic SEO compliance. It shifts the unit of analysis from URL to template: point it at a 10,000-URL pSEO directory and pseolint identifies the template clusters (e.g. /listing/:slug, /category/:slug), samples K pages from each, and produces a per-template verdict + variance metric. Fix one template, fix N pages.

npx pseolint http://localhost:3000

• Why this exists

• How pseolint differs

• Quick Start

• What It Checks — the 45 rules

• CLI Options

• GitHub Action

• Fix rail — from audit to pull request

• Skills for Claude & coding agents

• Roadmap

• Contributing

Skills for Claude & coding agents (new)

Design pages that pass before you crawl them. The skills/ suite gives Claude (and any agent that supports the skills / Claude Code plugin format) programmatic-SEO and answer-engine optimization (AEO / GEO) guidance where every recommendation is bound to a runnable pseolint rule:

npx skills add ouranos-labs/pseolint --skill pseolint aeo

• pseolint — full-lifecycle programmatic SEO: design → build → audit → fix → gate.

• aeo — get cited in AI Overviews / ChatGPT / Perplexity, not just ranked.

Unlike prose checklists, these have teeth: the design-time advice ends in npx pseolint pass/fail. See skills/README.md.

Related MCP server: ai-visibility-mcp

Why this exists

Programmatic SEO works — when it works. The gap between "1,000 indexed pages" and "1,000 pages that survive a SpamBrain pass" is where most pSEO sites die. The Helpful Content Update made that gap permanent.

Existing SEO tools (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Ahrefs Site Audit) were built for editorially-curated sites. They check pages one at a time. But the SpamBrain risks of pSEO are between pages: doorway clusters, near-duplicates, entity-swap templates, thin-content propagation. You can't catch them with per-page rules.

pseolint audits the graph — it groups results by template before surfacing them. Run it before you publish, gate it in CI, fix the broken template before SpamBrain does.

How it compares

The general-purpose crawlers do plenty pseolint doesn't (JS rendering at scale, backlink data, log-file analysis). pseolint is the specialist for the one thing they weren't built for: programmatic-SEO compliance at the template level.

How pseolint differs

• Graph-level, not page-level. Detects near-duplicate clusters, doorway patterns, and entity-swap doorways across thousands of pages. Per-page tools can't see these.

• SpamBrain + AI Overview. 45 rules across 8 categories — SpamBrain-policy mapping (penalty risk) plus aeo/* (AI Overview citability: llms.txt, AI-crawler access, citable facts, answer-first, summary-bait).

• Developer workflow, not SaaS UI. CLI, GitHub Action, JSON/HTML reports, MCP server, browser extension (SERP competitive recon). Lives in your repo and your PRs.

• Actionable, not advisory. Every finding has a fix, an effort tag (quick fix / moderate / structural), and a Google docs reference.

• Safe for hosted use. SSRF guard (DNS-validated), robots.txt honoured for our own crawler, analytics-blocking in render mode, AbortSignal cancellation, safeMode: "saas" preset for embedding in services.

• Calibrated against reputable pSEO. Engine verdicts are calibrated against a curated corpus of in-production pSEO sites that demonstrably win in search. Doorway-pattern findings cluster (no more per-pair noise); verdicts are reproducible at a fixed sampleSeed. Dated snapshot results, the open-source corpus, and the trade-offs we accepted live at pseolint.dev/methodology. Spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-03-calibration-against-reputable-pseo.md.

• Authority-blind by design, with a manual override. pseolint analyses static content + the link graph it can see. It does NOT measure backlinks, brand mentions, domain age, or any external trust signal — there is no Moz/Ahrefs/Semrush dependency. This means the engine itself is calibrated for the authority tier of the calibration corpus (established brands). It exposes authorityScore (0-100, via the --authority-score CLI flag, the core API, or the MCP param) so callers can adjust the verdict ladder for their tier: >= 80 shifts one tier lenient (established brand can absorb shapes a newer site can't); <= 30 shifts one tier stricter. Raw risk number unchanged so CI gates stay stable. Without the flag, treat verdicts as a directional minimum.

• Honest about blind spots. Beyond domain authority, pseolint does not currently detect: image SEO dimensions, schema-content drift (e.g. JSON-LD price ≠ rendered price), outbound-link health, search-intent alignment, parameter-URL crawl-budget waste, and a handful of specialty gaps (mobile-friendliness, cookie-banner detection, AMP/News/Video schema). The complete blind-spot audit lives at docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-03-pseolint-blind-spots.md — every gap categorized by impact tier with the roadmap fix.

Full version history — calibration rounds, per-rule changes, safety hardening — is in CHANGELOG.md.

Quick Start

# Point it at your local dev server — that's it
npx pseolint http://localhost:3000

Automatically discovers all pages by following internal links. No sitemap, no config, no build step needed.

# Save a visual report
npx pseolint http://localhost:3000 --format html --output report.html

# Audit a live site (per-template output is the default)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com

# CI gate on build output
npx pseolint ./out --ci-threshold concerning --format json

Per-template output (v0.6 default)

Verdict: CONCERNING
Integrity C · Discoverability B · Citation C · Data A

Per-template breakdown (3 templates):

  /listing/:slug  CONCERNING  C
  10/8201 URLs (0.1%)  uniformity 85%
  8/10 samples fail `spam/thin-content`

  /category/:slug  READY  A
  10/312 URLs (3.2%)  uniformity 94%

  /help/:slug  CAUTION  B
  10/47 URLs (21.3%)  uniformity 78%
  3/10 samples fail `content/missing-author`

--format json includes the templates array alongside the existing findings list:

{
  "verdict": "concerning",
  "risk": 60,
  "templates": [
    {
      "signature": "/listing/:slug",
      "totalUrls": 8201,
      "auditedUrls": ["https://example.com/listing/foo", "..."],
      "verdict": "concerning",
      "risk": 60,
      "variance": {
        "uniformityScore": 0.85,
        "topDriver": { "ruleId": "spam/thin-content", "fireRate": 0.8 }
      }
    },
    { "signature": "/category/:slug", "verdict": "ready", "risk": 12 }
  ],
  "findings": [...]
}

Use --legacy-flat to suppress the template cards and get the v0.5-style flat findings list.

Partial coverage (truncated)

If the crawl is interrupted — e.g. the backpressure watchdog aborts because the origin is degrading — pseolint still emits whatever it collected, flagged as partial:

{
  "verdict": "ready",
  "risk": 12,
  "truncated": true,
  "truncatedReason": "Origin degraded mid-crawl (p95 latency exceeded threshold)",
  "pageCount": 42
}

When truncated is true, treat pageCount, risk, and verdict as lower bounds — a partial pass is not a full pass. The CLI prints a PARTIAL REPORT banner and exits non-zero; the GitHub Action warns (and can fail with fail-on-truncated: true); the MCP tools and web report surface the same flag. Programmatic consumers should branch on it. The full output contract is published as a JSON Schema (packages/core/schemas/audit-summary.schema.json, $id carries the schemaVersion).

Audit Modes

Why localhost is recommended: Build directories contain framework artifacts (Next.js [slug].html shells, empty client-rendered pages) that produce false positives. Your dev server renders the actual pages Google will see — with canonicals, meta tags, and full content.

What It Checks

45 rules across 8 categories (all 8 scored), producing a weighted SpamBrain Risk Score (0-100) and an independent AEO sub-score for AI Overview citability:

SpamBrain Risk Detection

Content Quality

Internal Linking

Technical SEO

Data Consistency

Structured Data

Cannibalization

cannibal/title-overlap and cannibal/keyword-collision were dropped in v0.4 due to high false-positive rates on legitimately similar pages (e.g. localized variants, paginated archives). See the v0.4 redesign spec §4.3.

AEO — AI Overview Readiness (v0.3.x)

Live URL Scanning

When you point pseolint at a URL, it captures what Google sees:

• HTTP metadata — status codes, redirect chains, X-Robots-Tag, Link headers

• Crawl discovery — follows internal links from the start page to find all crawlable pages

• Sitemap comparison — if a sitemap exists, compares it against crawl-discovered pages

# Just give it your homepage — it discovers everything
npx pseolint https://paperforge.dev

Page Groups

Different page types need different standards. Configure groups in pseolint.config.ts:

export default {
  pageGroups: {
    pseo: {
      match: '/templates/**',
      rules: ['spam/*', 'content/*', 'links/*', 'cannibal/*', 'tech/*', 'schema/*'],
      overrides: {
        'spam/thin-content': { thinContentMinWords: 500 },
      }
    },
    listing: {
      match: ['/documents', '/templates'],
      rules: ['tech/*'],
    },
    marketing: {
      match: ['/', '/about', '/pricing'],
      rules: ['tech/*'],
    },
    utility: {
      match: ['**/404*', '**/500*'],
      rules: [],  // skip entirely
    }
  }
};

Each group gets its own score. Unmatched pages get all rules.

SpamBrain Risk Score

The risk score (0–100) aggregates rule penalties into 4 super-categories — Integrity (spam + content + cannibal), Discoverability (links + tech), Citation (aeo + schema), and Data — with site-type-aware weights, so a programmatic directory and a docs site are each scored against the rule weighting that matches their archetype. Since v0.6, scoring runs per template and rolls up to a site verdict: the worst-scoring template that covers ≥5% of the audited URLs.

The score maps to a 4-rung verdict ladder, and CI gates on the verdict (--ci-threshold, default concerning) — not a raw numeric band:

See pseolint.dev/methodology for the calibrated weights and verdict thresholds.

Actionable Output

Findings are automatically enriched before display:

• Pairwise clustering — Thousands of near-duplicate pair comparisons collapse into a handful of cluster findings: "48 pages form a near-duplicate cluster (86–94% similar)."

• Content breakdown — Each cluster shows what's shared vs. unique: "Shared: description of property (31w), buyer acknowledges (35w). Unique: 3324w of 8140w."

• Effort tags — Every finding is tagged quick fix, moderate, or structural so you know where to start.

• Template detection — When the tool detects template-generated content, fix suggestions speak to template authors: "Add conditional content sections per entity."

CLI Options

Usage: pseolint [options] [command] [source]

Arguments:
  source                         URL or directory path to audit

Output
  -f, --format <type>            Output format: console | json | markdown | html (default: console)
  --ci-threshold <severity>      Min verdict that fails CI: ready|caution|concerning|critical (default: concerning)
  -t, --threshold <n>            [deprecated] Numeric risk threshold; use --ci-threshold instead
  -o, --output <file>            Write report to file instead of stdout
  --no-color                     Disable colored output

Crawl / fetch
  --concurrency <n>              Max parallel HTTP fetches (default: 5)
  --timeout <ms>                 Per-request timeout in ms (default: 30000)
  --no-crawl                     Disable crawl-based page discovery for URL sources
  --ignore <patterns>            Comma-separated glob patterns to exclude
  --render                       Render pages in a browser before auditing
  --browser-ws <url>             CDP WebSocket endpoint for browser rendering

Sampling
  --sample-size <n>              Audit N pages (default: 0 = all)
  --strategy <random|stratified> Sampling strategy (default: stratified)
  --max-per-template <n>         Cap samples per URL template cluster (default: 0)

Template output (v0.6)
  --per-template                 Render per-template cards above the findings list (default: ON)
  --template <signature>         Filter output to a single template, e.g. /listing/:slug
  --legacy-flat                  Suppress template cards; print the v0.5-style flat findings list

Cache & monitoring
  --cache [dir]                  Enable HTTP cache (default: .pseolint/cache)
  --cache-ttl <duration>         TTL for entries without validators, e.g. 7d, 1h, 30m (default: 7d)
  --state [path]                 Enable state persistence (default: .pseolint/state.json)
  --mode <monitoring|fresh>      v0.5+ change-driven monitoring mode. Auto-monitoring is the
                                 default when prior state exists. Use 'fresh' to force a full
                                 re-audit even with prior state.
  --age-floor-days <n>           v0.5+ minimum days since a URL's last fetch before monitoring
                                 forces a re-fetch regardless of other signals (default: 7)
  --since                        v0.5+ alias for --mode=monitoring (kept for back-compat)
  --exit-on-regression           Exit non-zero when new rule IDs fire vs prior --state

Data
  --data-source <file>           JSON file with source data for content-verification rules

AI triage (opt-in)
  --ai                           Enable AI triage of findings
  --ai-provider <id>             anthropic | openai | google | mistral | groq | xai | cohere | ollama
  --ai-model <name>              Model name (overrides provider default)
  --ai-endpoint <url>            AI endpoint (Ollama only; default: http://localhost:11434)
  --ai-max-tokens <n>            Input token cap per triage call (default: 60000)
  --ai-max-cost <usd>            Refuse a triage call whose pre-flight cost exceeds this USD
  --ai-daily-budget <usd>        Refuse triage when today's total spend would exceed USD (requires --telemetry)
  --ai-cache-ttl <duration>      Triage cache TTL, e.g. 30d, 12h, 60s (default: 30d)
  --no-ai-cache                  Bypass AI triage cache for this run
  --no-ai-suggest                Suppress AI discovery hint in non-AI runs

Telemetry (local, offline)
  --telemetry                    Enable local telemetry write (.pseolint/telemetry.jsonl)
  --telemetry-path <file>        Override telemetry JSONL path
  --no-telemetry-prompt          Suppress the y/n/skip triage feedback prompt
  --triage-feedback <rating>     Non-interactive feedback: helpful | unhelpful | y | n

MCP
  --mcp                          Start as an MCP server (for AI coding assistants)

Commands:
  stats                          Show aggregate telemetry stats from .pseolint/telemetry.jsonl
  stats-export <outPath>         Copy telemetry JSONL to <outPath> for manual review/sharing

Caching & change-driven monitoring (v0.5)

# First run: populates .pseolint/cache and .pseolint/state.json with full baseline
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --cache --state

# Subsequent runs auto-enter monitoring mode. The decision matrix decides which
# URLs to fetch BEFORE the network round-trip:
#   - new URL                         → fetch (reason: new)
#   - prior fetch ≥ 7 days old        → fetch (reason: age)
#   - ruleset version bumped          → fetch (reason: ruleset)
#   - prior warning/error finding     → fetch (reason: recheck) — info findings carry forward
#   - sitemap <lastmod> newer         → fetch (reason: lastmod)
#   - none of the above + lastmod present → SKIP (carry findings forward)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --cache --state

# Force a full re-audit even with prior state
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --cache --state --mode=fresh

# Lower the age-floor for tighter monitoring (default: 7 days)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --cache --state --age-floor-days=3

# CI gate that fails when a *new* rule ID starts firing on actually-fetched URLs
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --cache --state --exit-on-regression

Sites whose sitemaps emit <lastmod> (Next.js, Yoast/WordPress, Astro) get the biggest savings — typically ~95% fewer fetches on steady-state monitoring runs. Sites without <lastmod> hit no-signal and refetch every URL; bandwidth is still saved via cache.ts conditional GETs but round-trips aren't skipped (a HEAD-fallback path is on the roadmap).

End-of-run summary line:

Monitoring: 47/4012 URLs re-scraped (recheck=23, lastmod=12, age=8, new=4), 3965 carried forward.

AI triage

Turns hundreds of findings into a handful of ranked root causes. Opt-in, bring-your-own API key, with cost guardrails:

# Auto-detect provider from env (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, etc.)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --ai

# Pin provider + model, cap spend
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --ai \
  --ai-provider anthropic \
  --ai-model claude-haiku-4-5 \
  --ai-max-cost 0.50

# Local-only (Ollama, no network cost)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --ai --ai-provider ollama --ai-model qwen2.5:7b

# Enforce a daily spend ceiling across runs (requires telemetry)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --ai --telemetry --ai-daily-budget 5.00

Every call prints a pre-flight cost estimate before hitting the provider. Cache hits don't count against the daily budget.

Local telemetry & stats

Telemetry is local JSONL only — zero network, counts + spend + feedback ratings. Off by default.

npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --ai --telemetry
npx pseolint stats              # show your success rate, spend, feedback ratio
npx pseolint stats-export out.jsonl  # copy log for manual inspection

Browser Rendering

For client-rendered sites (React SPAs, Next.js app router), use --render to capture the fully rendered DOM:

# With a remote CDP endpoint (Browserless, etc.)
PSEOLINT_BROWSER_WS=wss://your-browser:3000 npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --render

# With local Playwright
npm install playwright-core
npx playwright install chromium
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --render

Works with any CDP-compatible browser. Remote endpoints must use wss://.

Core Web Vitals

Two sources, both opt-in:

# Lab: measure LCP + CLS from a headless-Chromium render. Zero external calls.
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --render

# Field: real-user p75 LCP/CLS/INP from the Chrome UX Report (the numbers Google
# ranks on, and the only source of INP). Free key: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/crux/api
CRUX_API_KEY=... npx pseolint https://yoursite.com          # or --crux-api-key <key>

# Query the mobile field data specifically (Google indexes mobile-first)
CRUX_API_KEY=... npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --crux-form-factor phone

Selection is per-metric: when a CrUX key is set, tech/core-web-vitals uses field data for each of LCP/CLS/INP and falls back to the lab render for any metric CrUX lacks — so enabling field data never drops a signal the lab render already had.

CrUX only covers URLs/origins with enough real traffic, so low-traffic pSEO pages get their origin-level field vitals as a fallback. A site-wide origin reading collapses into one finding (not one per page). Per-URL lookups are pooled and capped at 150 (--crux-max-lookups <n>, or 0 for unlimited); if the cap forces origin-level fallback, or CrUX rate-limits (429) / rejects the key (401/403), pseolint says so rather than silently reporting "no data". The CrUX endpoint is a fixed Google host — no external-authority dependency on your own content, consistent with pseolint's offline-runnable design.

GitHub Action

name: pSEO Lint
on: [pull_request]

jobs:
  audit:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with: { node-version: '20' }
      - run: npm run build
      - uses: ouranos-labs/pseolint/packages/action@action-v1
        with:
          source: ./out
          threshold: 40

Posts a score summary as a PR comment and fails the check if score exceeds the threshold.

Fix rail — from audit to pull request

The AI orchestrator produces a fix manifest (validated patches). pseolint apply writes the deterministic ones (meta titles, H1s, robots.txt, sitemap.xml) straight into your source tree; generative or unmatched patches are demoted to a checklist for a human. --pr takes the next step: commit those edits to a tool-owned branch and open a PR.

# 1. Audit → manifest
pseolint orchestrate https://example.com --max-cost 3 --manifest-out manifest.json

# 2. Apply deterministic edits into your working tree (review the diff, commit yourself)
pseolint apply manifest.json

# 3. …or apply + commit + open a GitHub PR in one step
pseolint apply manifest.json --pr --token "$GITHUB_TOKEN"

Mapping (.pseolint/templates.json)

Audited routes don't know your source layout, so you map them once (route pattern → source file). Domain-level patches use the special robots.txt / sitemap.xml keys:

{
  "/listing/:slug": "app/listing/[slug]/page.tsx",
  "/category/:slug": "app/category/[slug]/page.tsx",
  "robots.txt": "public/robots.txt",
  "sitemap.xml": "app/sitemap.ts"
}

Route keys accept :seg / [seg] / * wildcards. A patch with no matching entry — or a literal that can't be found in an interpolated template like Best in ${city} — lands in the checklist (or the PR body) instead of silently corrupting source.

In CI

apply --pr uses git + one GitHub API call — no extra dependency. Give the workflow write permissions and let actions/checkout configure the push token:

name: pSEO fix PR
on: { workflow_dispatch: {} }

jobs:
  fix:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions: { contents: write, pull-requests: write }
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with: { node-version: '20' }
      - run: npm run build
      - run: npx pseolint orchestrate http://localhost:3000 --max-cost 3 --manifest-out manifest.json
        env: { ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: '${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}' }
      - run: npx pseolint apply manifest.json --pr
        env: { GITHUB_TOKEN: '${{ github.token }}' }

Re-running updates the same pseolint/fix-<domain> branch (force-with-lease, tool-owned branch only) — it never spams new PRs. It no-ops cleanly when there's nothing deterministic to apply.

Output Formats

npx pseolint https://yoursite.com                  # Colored terminal (default)
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --format json    # CI-friendly JSON
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --format markdown # PR comments / docs
npx pseolint https://yoursite.com --format html    # Self-contained visual report

Monorepo

Development

bun install
bun run build
bun run test     # 1,203 tests across 126 files (core)

Roadmap

• AI-inferred template mapping — today apply --pr needs a hand-authored .pseolint/templates.json; infer route→source automatically.

• Closing blind spots — schema-content drift, outbound-link health, search-intent alignment. Every gap is tracked by impact tier in the blind-spot audit. (Core Web Vitals landed: lab LCP/CLS via --render, real-user field p75 + INP via --crux-api-key.)

• Web "Open PR" button — the fix rail runs from the CLI/Action today; a hosted one-click flow is deferred until the GitHub-App auth is justified.

Found a false positive or a missing check? Open an issue — corpus-backed bug reports move the calibration.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev loop, and skills/ if you want to teach an agent to design pass-first pages. If pseolint saved you a SpamBrain headache, a ⭐ helps others find it.

License

MIT (packages) / AGPL-3.0 (apps/web)