publish
The publish target is text that leaves the machine through a tool call: a gh pr comment, an MCP call that posts a page, the page the Artifact tool publishes. Nothing can un-publish, so this target checks before the call runs, and block is the default. With the defaults, only the Artifact page is checked; the gh and MCP sources are opt-in.
"publish": { "mode": "block", "gh": false, "mcp": [], "artifact": true, "unresolved": "ask" }| Value | Behaviour |
|---|---|
off |
No publish checks. |
warn |
The call runs; the agent gets the alerts and is told to fix the text. |
block |
The default. A call with an error-level alert is denied before it runs, with the alerts and a rewrite instruction. |
true checks the gh commands that publish prose: create, comment, edit, and review under gh pr, gh issue, and gh release, plus gh api calls that write a prose field. Each value lints as its own fragment, named gh.<subcommand>.<field>.publish, so .vale.ini can narrow rules per field. Needs Claude Code 2.1.85 or newer for the command filter; older versions run the hook on every Bash command, with identical results.
A list of MCP tool-name patterns, with * wildcards, such as ["mcp__confluence__*", "mcp__jira__*"]. On a matching call, every string argument that holds whitespace lints as its own fragment, named mcp.<server>.<tool>.<field>.publish. A string without whitespace is treated as an id and skipped.
artifact
Section titled “artifact”true, the default, checks the page the Artifact tool publishes. The hook reads the page at its path before the call and lints it as artifact.<file> with its own extension, so Vale parses HTML as HTML.
unresolved
Section titled “unresolved”A published value the checker cannot read before the call: a $(...) substitution, a variable, backticks, stdin, a heredoc, or a gh api --input file that is not JSON. The checker refuses to guess what the shell will produce. ask, the default, asks you to confirm the call; allow lets it run; deny refuses it. Under a harness mode that answers permissions automatically, ask acts as allow.
The details and the known gaps are in Checking published text.