A finding is what MergeGuide reports when your code doesn’t satisfy a policy.
This page explains what’s in a finding and how to act on it.
Anatomy of a finding Each finding tells you:
File and line — where the issue is in your code.Severity — how serious it is (critical / high / medium / low), and
whether it blocks, per your thresholds .Message — what the issue is, in plain language.Remediation guidance — how to fix it.
Text output prints one finding per issue with these details, then exits with a
code that reflects whether anything blocking was found.
Act on a finding
Read the message and guidance
The finding states the problem and a suggested fix. Start there.
Open the file at the reported line
Go to the file and line in the finding and make the change.
Re-run the check
A fixed finding no longer appears. The run exits 0 when nothing blocking
remains. Low-confidence findings Low-confidence findings are hidden from text output by default to keep the signal
high. To see them:
mergeguide check src/ --show-low-confidence
Suppress a finding When a finding is a known, accepted exception, you can stop a specific policy from
firing across a project by disabling it in config:
disabled_policies : - example-noisy-rule
To exclude paths entirely (for example, generated code or vendored dependencies):
exclude_patterns : - "**/vendor/**" - "**/generated/**"
Suppressing a finding turns off a control. Disable a policy or exclude a path only
when you’ve reviewed the finding and accept the exception — and keep the scope as
narrow as possible.
Machine-readable output For dashboards, CI, or your IDE’s problems panel, emit JSON or SARIF instead of
text:
mergeguide check src/ --format sarif --output results.sarif
See Output formats .
Next steps
Enforcement layers Where findings surface in your workflow.
Dashboard Review findings across your repositories.
