---
id: check-jsonschema
version: "0.38.0"
license: unclear
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# check-jsonschema — A jsonschema CLI and pre-commit hook

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 3.9M/mo

## What it is and what it does

check-jsonschema is a JSON Schema validator that runs as a standalone CLI tool or integrates into pre-commit workflows. It reads JSON or YAML files and validates them against a schema you specify—either a local file or a remote URL (HTTP/HTTPS). Remote schemas are cached automatically to avoid repeated downloads. The tool is built on the jsonschema library and provides a straightforward command-line interface with options like --verbose for detailed output.

It's designed for developers who want to enforce schema compliance in their repositories—common use cases include validating GitHub Actions workflow files, configuration files, or any JSON/YAML document that should conform to a known structure. You can run it manually from the command line or wire it into pre-commit to catch schema violations before commits are made.

Use it for:

- Validate GitHub Actions workflow YAML files in CI/CD pipelines before they run.
- Enforce schema compliance on configuration files (e.g., package.json, pyproject.toml) in pre-commit hooks.
- Batch-validate JSON API responses or data exports against a known schema.
- Catch malformed JSON/YAML in documentation or example files during development.
- Integrate schema validation into build or linting workflows without writing custom code.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

A command-line tool and pre-commit hook that validates JSON and YAML files against JSON Schema, with support for local and remote schemas.

Yes. Active maintenance, permissive license, low install friction, no known vulnerabilities, and a focused, well-scoped tool. Install it if you need to validate JSON or YAML against schemas in a CLI or pre-commit context—it does exactly that without bloat.

## Install

pip install check-jsonschema
uv add check-jsonschema
poetry add check-jsonschema

## Installing check-jsonschema

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel. Active maintenance—released 5 days ago with a last commit on 2026-08-10. Depends on six common, well-maintained packages (jsonschema, click, requests, ruamel.yaml, tomli, regress), all of which have minimal transitive load.

License in practice: Licensed under Apache Software License (permissive). No restrictions on commercial use, modification, or redistribution; suitable for most projects.

Quickstart:

pip install check-jsonschema

check-jsonschema --schemafile schema.json instance.json

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

Verify before relying:

- Whether remote schema caching behavior persists across invocations and how cache invalidation is handled.
- Performance characteristics when validating large files or many files in sequence.

## Package facts

- License: not declared (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 3.9M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

json schema validation cli, pre-commit json validator, yaml schema checker, jsonschema command line tool, validate json against schema, pre-commit hook json, validation, pre-commit, cli-tool

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