Guides

Continuous integration

Make CI fail when translations fall behind — one command, no credentials.

The gate#

lingo validate --strict is the CI command. It reads the committed locale files and .i18n-state/, reports what's missing or outdated, and exits 1 if any strict-tier violation is present — no API key required, so it's safe to run on every build.

shell

bundle exec bin/lingo validate --strict

GitHub Actions#

Add it as a step after bundle install:

.github/workflows/ci.yml

- name: Validate translations
  run: bundle exec bin/lingo validate --strict

Choosing a tier#

--strict fails on the strict tier (missing + outdated by default) — the pragmatic gate that keeps translations from silently falling behind. --strict-all uses the strict_all tier, which additionally fails on duplicate values (and, if enabled, manual edits) — a stricter bar for teams that want zero drift. Both tiers are configurable; see the Configuration reference.

Commit the state#

For CI to detect drift, the .i18n-state/ files must be committed alongside the locale files — they're the shared record of which source value each translation was made from. Treat them like any other source file in review.

Use lingo hash as a cache key to skip translation steps when the source locale hasn't changed between builds.