/validate

name: OSCAL Validate
description: Validate an OSCAL document (catalog, profile, SSP, SAP, SAR, POA&M, component definition, assessment results) against the official JSON schemas.

/oscal:validate

Validates an OSCAL document against the NIST JSON schemas bundled with `oscal-cli`. Supports JSON, XML, and YAML input (XML/YAML are auto-converted internally for validation).

How to run

bash plugins/oscal/scripts/validate.sh <file> [--quiet] [--json]

Arguments

• `<file>` — path to the OSCAL document to validate.
• `--quiet` — only emit on failure.
• `--json` — structured JSON output `{ok: bool, errors: [...], schema_version: "1.1.3"}` for CI pipelines.

What it validates

• JSON schema conformance (structural + type)
• Required fields present
• Enum values valid
• UUID format for all identifiers
• OSCAL version declared and supported

Exit codes

• `0` — valid
• `6` — schema violation(s); details on stderr (or stdout JSON with `--json`)
• `2` — file not found / unreadable
• `5` — `oscal` binary not installed (run `/oscal:setup`)

Example

/oscal:validate gap-assessment-20260413/gap-report.oscal-ar

This checks that `/grc-engineer:gap-assessment`'s OSCAL Assessment Results output is well-formed before handing it to downstream tooling (Compliance Trestle, eMASS, FedRAMP 20X).

Non-goals

• **Semantic validation** (e.g., does this SSP actually align with its referenced catalog?). Use `oscal-cli resolve` (coming in a future release) or Compliance Trestle for that.
• **FedRAMP-specific constraint checking**. For that, combine this with the `fedramp-ssp` plugin and the `fedramp-docs` MCP for spec lookups.