Is it possible to validate a plain JSON Schema?

[silwol]

Validating an OpenAPI specification file is as simple as putting extends: "spectral:oas" into a .yaml file, and passing this in as a parameter when calling spectral lint.

I have a use case where I don't have an OpenAPI specification inside a file, but just a plain JSON schema which I'd check for consistency? Is that possible? Given the fact that the spectral:oas ruleset relies on JSON Schema, and the draft-2020-12 JSON schema definition is even included in the source tree, this should be rather straight-forward, right? Is it exposed as functionality somewhere? I tried using spectral:jsonschema and spectral:json-schema, but none of these worked.

[uuf6429]

I have this same problem... I spent some time setting up spectral only to learn that by default it won't do anything. I was kind of expecting some basic rules like "description must be set in specific cases", "object properties must be camelCased" or some complex checks to rule out impossible situations like allOf: [string, object] etc.

[erwinkramer]

I just built this custom function, it's a bit of a poor man's implementation of JSON schema validation, but it does just what i need it to do: https://github.com/erwinkramer/bank-api/blob/main/.spectral/functions/well-formed-object.js

[damnthonyy]

I've created json-schema-validate; a package that combines swagger-parser (for structural validation + circular detection) and Spectral (for quality rules) to properly handle what both tools alone can't do.

npm install @damnthonyy/json-schema-validate

import { validateSchema } from '@damnthonyy/json-schema-validate';

const result = await validateSchema(spec);

if (result.valid) {
  console.log('✅ Spec is valid');
} else {
  result.issues.forEach(issue => {
    console.log(`[${issue.severity}] ${issue.source}: ${issue.message}`);
  });
}

What it validates

• Broken $ref references
• Circular references (Pet → Owner → Pet)
• Invalid OpenAPI format
• Quality issues (empty descriptions, missing types, OAS compliance)