JSON Formatter and Validation Utility

What it solves

JSON logs, API responses, and config files often arrive compactly, making it easy to miss missing commas, quotes, or nesting errors. Manual reformatting can also overwrite team conventions or change apparent key order. This skill separates syntax validation from pretty-printing, which fits terminal workflows and scripted JSON checks.

Core workflow

• Format: Use format to pretty-print JSON, with -i controlling indentation spaces (default 2) and --sort-keys sorting keys alphabetically.
• Validate: Use validate to check syntax without emitting formatted output, useful for confirming whether a payload parses.
• I/O: Read from a file or stdin; write to stdout by default, or to a file via -o / --output.
• Exit codes: 0 success, 1 invalid JSON syntax, 2 missing file or permission error, and 3 other errors, which helps CI and shell scripts branch deterministically.

Limits to note

It targets standard JSON, not JSON5, comments, or JS expressions. validate does not rewrite content, and --sort-keys may change the displayed key order, so avoid it when downstream tooling depends on the original order. File mode still requires readable paths and writable output directories.