---
id: interrogate
version: "1.7.0"
license: unclear
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# interrogate — Interrogate a codebase for docstring coverage.

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 1.5M/mo

## What it is and what it does

Interrogate is a command-line tool that analyzes Python source code to measure how thoroughly it is documented with docstrings. It scans modules, classes, functions, and methods to identify which have docstrings and which do not, then reports coverage as a percentage. The tool is designed to integrate into CI/CD pipelines to enforce documentation standards on new code and to assess code quality and maintainability in existing projects.

The package depends on click for CLI handling, colorama for colored output, tabulate for formatted reporting, attrs for data structures, py for filesystem utilities, and tomli for configuration parsing. It can generate SVG coverage badges by default, with optional PNG output available through an extras install (though PNG generation requires additional system libraries). The tool supports configuration via pyproject.toml or setup.cfg files.

Use it for:

- Enforce minimum docstring coverage thresholds in CI/CD pipelines to prevent undocumented code from being merged.
- Audit an unfamiliar codebase to assess documentation quality as part of code review or onboarding.
- Generate and display docstring coverage badges in project README or documentation sites.
- Track documentation coverage trends over time by running interrogate in regular builds.
- Identify specific undocumented functions and classes with verbose output for targeted documentation efforts.

## Worth the install?

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

Interrogate scans a Python codebase to measure and report docstring coverage across modules, classes, functions, and methods, helping identify undocumented code.

Yes. Interrogate is a lightweight, actively maintained tool with no known vulnerabilities, permissive licensing, and low install friction. It solves a real problem—measuring and enforcing docstring coverage—with a straightforward CLI and CI/CD integration. Install it if you want to track or enforce documentation standards in your Python projects.

## Install

pip install interrogate
uv add interrogate
poetry add interrogate

## Installing interrogate

Before you install: Low install friction with six lightweight runtime dependencies (attrs, click, colorama, py, tabulate, tomli). Actively maintained as of August 2026 with stable production status.

License in practice: Licensed under MIT (permissive), allowing use in most projects without restriction.

Quickstart:

$ pip install interrogate
$ interrogate /path/to/project
RESULT: PASSED (minimum: 80.0%, actual: 100.0%)

Requires Python 3.8 or above. Optional PNG badge generation requires system libraries (Visual C++ on Windows, cairo/libffi on macOS, cairo/python3-dev/libffi-dev on Linux).

Verify before relying:

- Whether the tool integrates with common CI/CD platforms beyond basic exit-code reporting.
- Performance characteristics on very large codebases (number of files/lines where slowdown becomes noticeable).
- Whether custom docstring formats or non-standard documentation patterns are recognized.

## Package facts

- License: not declared (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 1.5M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

docstring coverage checker, documentation coverage measurement, missing docstrings detector, code documentation audit, docstring compliance tool, python documentation quality, enforce docstring standards, documentation-quality, ci-cd-integration, code-metrics

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/interrogate) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/interrogate/)