Stylelint
Modern CSS linter that catches errors and enforces style conventions in CSS, SCSS, Sass, Less, and CSS-in-JS. 170+ built-in rules for property ordering, color format consistency, selector specificity, and syntax errors. Integrates with editors (VS Code, JetBrains) and CI pipelines. Stylelint v16 dropped Node 14/16 support and moved to flat config format.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Local execution only. No security concerns specific to Stylelint.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You need to enforce CSS code quality standards across a team or codebase with comprehensive rules for SCSS/CSS.
Avoid When
You only need CSS formatting (use Prettier) or build-time transforms (use Lightning CSS). Stylelint is a quality/consistency tool.
Use Cases
- • Enforce CSS coding standards across teams — consistent property ordering, color notation, and naming conventions
- • Catch CSS errors before runtime — invalid property values, unknown properties, duplicate selectors
- • Lint SCSS/Sass files in design system codebases for consistency across component stylesheets
- • Integrate CSS linting into agent CI pipelines to validate generated CSS output quality
- • Auto-fix fixable CSS issues in codebase maintenance agents using stylelint --fix
Not For
- • JavaScript linting — use ESLint
- • CSS formatting/pretty-printing — use Prettier; Stylelint focuses on code quality rules not formatting
- • Build-time CSS optimization — use Lightning CSS or PostCSS for transforms
Interface
Authentication
No authentication — local linting tool.
Pricing
MIT-licensed open source project.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Stylelint v16 moved to flat config (stylelint.config.mjs) — legacy .stylelintrc format still works but new config format differs from v15 documentation
- ⚠ CSS-in-JS linting requires additional plugins (stylelint-config-styled-components etc.) — base Stylelint only processes plain CSS/SCSS files
- ⚠ Rule configuration is verbose — enabling recommended rule sets (stylelint-config-standard) reduces config boilerplate but may conflict with project conventions
- ⚠ Performance on large SCSS codebases can be slow — caching (--cache flag) dramatically speeds up repeated runs
- ⚠ Some rules conflict with CSS preprocessor features (SCSS variables, mixins) — SCSS-specific config extends needed: stylelint-config-standard-scss
- ⚠ Prettier and Stylelint can conflict on formatting rules — use stylelint-config-prettier to disable conflicting Stylelint format rules
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.