Knip configuration

[daviddening]

Question

I added knip to search for unused code, but the configs are giving me trouble.

I have some lambda.ts files that are entry points. I'd assume this would tell knip that they are entry points, but knip marks them as unused files.

Running knip by itself does correctly use my config file and does not mark the lambda.ts files as unused.

Note: I'm trying to specify the entry two ways.

.qlty/configs/knip.json

{
  "entry": [
    "{index,cli,main,lambda}.{js,cjs,mjs,jsx,ts,cts,mts,tsx}",
    "src/{index,cli,main}.{js,cjs,mjs,jsx,ts,cts,mts,tsx}",
    "**/lambda.ts"
  ],
  "project": ["**/*.{js,cjs,mjs,jsx,ts,cts,mts,tsx}!"]
}

I also tried explicitly setting the config in .qlty/qlty.toml

[[plugin]]
name="knip"
config_files=["knip.json"]

and

config_files=[".qlty/configs/knip.json"]
config_files=["configs/knip.json"]
config_files=["<full path>/knip.json"]

Further the ingnore directives don't work for knip.

Any ideas?

How to reproduce (optional)

Expected behavior (optional)

No response

CLI Version

qlty 0.540.0 macos-arm64 (d4b1d76 2025-06-05)

Information about Qlty configuration and environment (optional)

// Add your qlty.toml

• OS:

[marschattha]

Can you share the invocation file for knip?
<Project>/.qlty/out/invoke-<ID>.yaml
Is knip.json showing up in there under config file?
If the project is on qlty cloud, can you share the URL?

[daviddening]

@marschattha Hey this is a snippet of the invoke.

qlty appears to pull from .qlty/configs auto-magically without needing config_files. Pretty reasonable, but not sure this documented.

It also looks like qlty is not using that config when it runs knip?

configPaths:
- /Users/daviddening/work/<myproject>/.qlty/configs/knip.json
script: sh -c "knip --no-progress --reporter json"

[marschattha]

I am guessing you have a subdirectory containing your package.json file?

Because of how knip runs in the same directory as package.json, it might not load the config which is copied over form qlty/configs/* to project root directory.

This sort of situation can normally be managed by explicitly adding a config flag but for some reason knip doesn't seem to be working with an absolute path to config, i-e knip --no-progress --reporter --config /User/name/work/project/.qlty/configs/knip.json
doesn't work but knip --no-progress --reporter --config .qlty/configs/knip.json works.

The workaround you can do is keep the knip.json file in the same directory as your package.json file (you will need multiple knip.json files if you have multiple package.json files).

[daviddening]

Thank you @marschattha