ultra11y
v5.31.0
Published
Audit HTML/CSS/JSX against WCAG 2.2 AA and produce a dated compliance report, or author/review accessible markup (native-HTML-first). A skills.sh agent skill: an install-free static engine (bundled, no npm install) plus the agent's judgment, with check/ve
Readme
ultra11y
Add to your coding agent
Two lines, and the accessibility review runs by itself before every commit, push and pull request — you never type the skill's name:
| | |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | /plugin marketplace add maxgfr/ultra11y then /plugin install ultra11y@ultra11y |
| OpenAI Codex CLI | codex plugin marketplace add maxgfr/ultra11y then codex plugin add ultra11y@ultra11y |
| OpenCode | npx ultra11y install --opencode — or pin "plugin": ["ultra11y@latest"] in opencode.json |
| Anything else | npx ultra11y install --agents-md (no hook API: see the caveat below) |
Prefer the skills only, without the automatic hook? npx skills add maxgfr/ultra11y
(--agent codex, --agent opencode, …). Already on npm and just want the gate?
npx ultra11y install --all, and npx ultra11y status to check what is actually wired.
Full details, thresholds and off-switches under Install.
Audit HTML/CSS/JSX against WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility and produce a dated compliance report — or author/review accessible markup without regressions. A skills.sh agent skill: a deterministic, zero-dependency static engine plus the agent's judgment, with
check/verifygates against hallucinated non-conformities. The central deliverable is the auditor conformance block — theme, criterion + official wording, test(s), WCAG mapping + level, finding, expected state, verification,file:lineoccurrences — rendered identically by thereport(compliance doc), theprdbacklog and the GitHub issues, in the active standard's vocabulary and in your language (--lang autofollows the conversation/repo). WCAG is the worldwide core; country standards (RGAA, …) are pluggable in-repo packs.
ultra11y is built around an honest division of labour. Automated tools only catch a fraction of accessibility problems, so the engine does the mechanical work — 81 machine-detectable static checks tied to the WCAG 2.2 success criteria — and is explicit about everything it can't decide statically. What it can't, the AI agent adjudicates (statically, from the evidence, gated by verify/check) — not a deferral to a human:
- Automatable (engine): missing
alt/lang/title, unlabeled fields, empty links/buttons, icon-only controls, iframes without title, tables without headers, heading-level skips, empty/dangling headings & labels, duplicate ids, invalid/broken ARIA, positivetabindex, autoplay/timed-refresh/blink/marqueemedia… - Agent judgment (gated): alt-text relevance, link purpose in context, reading/tab order, caption accuracy — the agent rules on these via
verify --manual→--apply, each verdict carrying a justification (or a groundable NC), never a silent "conforming". - Needs rendering (scan tier): computed contrast, visible focus, zoom/reflow, content on hover — decided by
scan(axe-core in a real browser); until then they stay residual risks, never silently "conforming". - Advisory vs non-conformity: a good practice with no failing normative test (an
advisorypack rule, a best-practice-only axe violation, an agent recommendation) renders as « Recommandation (non normative) » — it never flips a criterion toNCnor enters the conformance rate. An NC always cites anormativeRef. - Stateful scan probes: the local runtime drives the page with bounded, non-navigating interactions (fill inputs then re-measure overflow; a live-region probe for status messages 4.1.3) —
--no-interactopts out;--interact-clicksre-enables button clicks on authenticated scans (destructive-named buttons are never clicked). - Normative page sample (échantillon): a country-standard audit runs over a declared
sample.pagesset —pages discover --crawl|--sitemap --writebuilds it for you (names read from each page's<title>, existing entries never overwritten),sample checklints its coverage against the standard's required page kinds,scan --samplescans it, and an un-scanned--standard rgaareport is flagged partial. - Pack-only detection (declarative): a standards pack can ship its own
rules(a bounded, ReDoS-guarded matcher DSL — no code) and normativity/severityoverrides, projecting onto its criteria without forking the engine.
Measured against a corpus it did not write
A self-authored fixture can only prove that a rule fires on the defect written for it. So the engine is also scored against the W3C ACT-Rules Community Group test corpus — 1 134 passed / failed / inapplicable examples across 91 rules, authored independently of this project:
| | |
|---|---|
| Rules scored | 32 (the ACT rules an equivalent engine check exists for) |
| failed examples caught | 103 / 149 |
| passed / inapplicable examples left alone | 291 / 291 — no unexplained false positive |
| Deliberate divergences | 9, each argued on the record |
| Declared gaps (statically decidable, not implemented) | 13 |
Rules needing a rendered page (computed contrast, keyboard traps) or a human call (is this heading descriptive?) are declared and routed, not silently scored zero. The full per-rule matrix — including every gap and every divergence — is generated into skills/ultra11y/references/act.md and re-checked on every build; the corpus itself is refreshed daily by a workflow, so the numbers cannot quietly go stale.
Install
As a CLI — on npm, zero runtime dependencies (Node ≥ 22.18):
npx ultra11y --help # no install
npm i -D ultra11y # or as a dev dependencyAs a test-runner plugin — audit a page inside your own E2E run, in the state your test built it:
import { checkA11y } from "ultra11y/playwright"; // or "ultra11y/cypress" (+ "/plugin")
await checkA11y(page, { as: "accueil" });As an agent skill — the repository ships two (pick at the prompt, or pass the name):
ultra11y for full audits, compliance reports, PRD backlogs and standards packs, and
review-a11y for the fast loop that audits exactly the code under change (staged files,
working diff, or branch vs merge-base) and reports like a code reviewer. Both bundle the same
install-free engine.
npx skills add maxgfr/ultra11y # this agent
npx skills add maxgfr/ultra11y --agent codex # …or opencode, cursor, gemini, amp, zed…As an agent plugin — the same two skills, plus the hook that makes the review
automatic. Installed this way, a pending git commit, git push or gh pr create
that carries accessibility findings is stopped once and the agent is handed the findings,
so review-a11y runs before the work goes out — you never type the skill's name.
/plugin marketplace add maxgfr/ultra11y # Claude Code
codex plugin marketplace add maxgfr/ultra11y # Codex CLI
npx ultra11y install --opencode # OpenCodeCodex's hook engine is a near-clone of Claude Code's — same events, same envelope, and it
exports ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} too — so both harnesses share one hooks/hooks.json.
OpenCode has no permission-decision channel, so there the gate surfaces as a failed bash
call whose error message carries the findings. Per-harness deltas, the Codex feature flag
and the trust prompt: skills/ultra11y/references/harnesses.md.
Four things worth knowing, because they bound what "automatic" means here:
- A hook cannot force a skill to be invoked. It blocks the command and hands over the
reason and the findings; the agent is what invokes
review-a11y. In practice a motivateddenyis enough — it is not a guarantee. - Hooks do not enable themselves. Installing the plugin is what turns them on. On Codex
they also need
[features] hooks = true, whichinstall --codexsets for you; runnpx ultra11y statusif you are not sure what is live. - No harness has a git event (no
PreCommit, noPRCreated), which is why the hook listens onPreToolUsefor the shell tool —Bashon Claude Code,shellon Codex — and recognises the commands that publish work. - On a harness with no hook API at all (Cursor, Amp, Zed, Gemini CLI…), nothing is
automatic.
npx ultra11y install --agents-mdmakes the engine discoverable and hands the agent the adjudication protocol;init --hookbelow is what actually enforces the gate.
The gate never blocks twice for the same findings, so a retry always lands. It stays out of
the way when git's own no-verify bypass is used, outside a repository, and whenever the
engine cannot answer.
Disable it per-repo with "hook": { "failOn": "off" } in .ultra11yrc.json, per-command
with SKIP_A11Y=1, or per-session with ULTRA11Y_HOOK=off; raise or lower the bar with
ULTRA11Y_HOOK_FAIL_ON=blocking|major|minor (default blocking).
As an MCP server — so an agent drives the engine as tools instead of shelling out:
claude mcp add ultra11y -- npx -y ultra11y mcpAs a GitHub Action — audits the PR diff and, optionally, the served pages:
- uses: maxgfr/ultra11y@v5
with: { since: auto, standard: rgaa, fail-on: blocking }Or clone and run the bundled engine straight from the repo:
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs --helpCommands
ultra11y audit <globs… | -> [--out <dir>] [--include <glob>] [--exclude <glob>] [--ext <list>] [--jsx] [--graph] [--json] [--lang auto|en|fr] [--no-default-excludes]
ultra11y audit [--changed | --since <ref> | --staged] [--max-files <n>] [--dedup exact|normalized|off] [--baseline <file>] [--fail-on blocking|major|minor]
ultra11y audit [--captures <dir>] [--no-captures] [--require-captures] # audit rendered-DOM captures alongside source
ultra11y audit [--format sarif|github] # CI: code-scanning SARIF, or inline annotations + job summary
ultra11y report --in <audit.json> [--out <dir>] [--standard <pack>] [--format sarif|github] [--lang auto|en|fr]
ultra11y prd --in <audit.json> [--out <dir>] [--split criterion] [--format audit|doc|remediation] [--standard <pack>] [--lang auto|en|fr]
ultra11y tickets --in <audit.json> [--provider auto|github|gitlab|jira] [--grain criterion|page|page-criterion|single|file] [--transport auto|cli|rest] [--max-tickets <n>] [--dry-run] [--json]
ultra11y render [<dir>] [--scaffold | --setup | --e2e | --coverage | --storybook] [--runner playwright|cypress] [--captures <dir>] [--out <file>] [--json]
ultra11y snapshot write [--root <dir>] [--fail-on blocking|major|minor] [--json] # payload on stdin → .ultra11y/pages/<id>/ + audit
ultra11y snapshot list [--root <dir>] [--json]
ultra11y pages --in <audit.json> [--standard <pack>] [--json] [--lang auto|en|fr] # the per-page criterion grid
ultra11y pages --in <audit.json> --format report [--split page] [--out <dir>] # the per-page report, with screenshots
ultra11y pages discover --sitemap <url> | --crawl <url> [--depth <n>] [--max <n>] [--write] # build the page sample
ultra11y dev [--port <n>] [--standard <pack>] | dev --next # live overlay while you build + dashboard
ultra11y criteria [<sc>] [--list] [--standard <pack> [--theme <N>]] [--generate] [--json] [--lang auto|en|fr]
ultra11y judge --in <audit.json> [--standard <pack>] [--max <n>] [--model <id>] [--apply] # adjudicate with a model (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY)
ultra11y check --report <md> [--standard <pack>] [--quiet] [--json]
ultra11y verify --report <md> [--standard <pack>] [--semantic] [--apply <verdicts.json>] [--max-verify <n>] [--json]
ultra11y fix <globs… | -> [--write] [--iterate] [--changed | --since <ref> | --staged] [--safe] [--only <ids>] [--jsx] [--json]
ultra11y init [--hook] [--ci] [--baseline] [--fail-on blocking|major|minor]
ultra11y pack check <pack.json> [--guidance <g.json>] | scaffold # gate an (AI-)authored standards pack
ultra11y scan <url|file…> [--runtime auto|local|docker] [--cwd <dir>] [--storage-state <file>] [--merge <audit.json>] [--out <dir>] [--json]
ultra11y scan --sitemap <url> | --crawl <url> [--depth <n>] [--max <n>] [--runtime …] [--merge <audit.json>] [--json]
ultra11y mcp [--transport stdio|http] [--cwd <dir>] [--allow-write] [--port <n>] [--bind <addr>] [--allow-remote]
# global: --pack <paths> (load external standards pack(s) at runtime) · --overrideUse it as an MCP server
The skill shells out to the CLI and parses its output. An MCP server skips both: your agent calls ultra11y as typed tools, with JSON schemas in and structured results out. Same engine, same standards data, no wrapper.
# stdio — the default, and what Claude Code / Claude Desktop / Cursor expect
claude mcp add ultra11y -- node /abs/path/to/scripts/ultra11y.mjs mcp
# or over HTTP, on loopback
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs mcp --transport http --port 7341
claude mcp add --transport http ultra11y http://127.0.0.1:7341/mcp// Claude Desktop takes stdio servers only — a remote URL here will not work.
{ "mcpServers": { "ultra11y": { "command": "node", "args": ["/abs/path/to/scripts/ultra11y.mjs", "mcp"] } } }
// Cursor, HTTP:
{ "mcpServers": { "ultra11y": { "url": "http://127.0.0.1:7341/mcp" } } }It serves all three MCP primitives, because a skill is three things: the engine (tools), the method (prompts), and the documentation the method refers to (resources). A client given only the tools runs the audit, sees no errors, and reports the page as accessible — a false conformance claim, which is the one output an accessibility tool must never produce.
Tools
Sixteen read tools, in two blocks. The audit block tells you what the page does:
| Tool | What it does |
|------|--------------|
| ultra11y_audit | The static pass — findings keyed by success criterion |
| ultra11y_adjudicate | The criteria the engine cannot decide, with their evidence |
| ultra11y_report | The dated conformance report, WCAG or a country pack |
| ultra11y_prd | Non-conformities → remediation units with effort |
| ultra11y_tickets | The same backlog as a ticket plan — dry-run, files nothing |
| ultra11y_check | The gate: nothing asserted conformant that was never tested |
| ultra11y_verify | Claim↔evidence worklist |
| ultra11y_pack_check | Validate a country standards pack against what it really ships |
| ultra11y_sample_check | Lint the normative page sample |
| ultra11y_pages | The per-page view: the criterion × page grid, or one dossier per page |
| ultra11y_read | A file, or a line range, from the project |
The reference block tells you what the standard requires — the half that keeps an agent
from auditing out of memory. cwd is optional on all five; it selects whose packs are visible:
| Tool | What it does |
|------|--------------|
| ultra11y_standards | Which standards exist here, and how much of each any engine can decide |
| ultra11y_criteria | One criterion in full — wording, numbered tests, techniques, mapping, defined terms — or the index, or one theme |
| ultra11y_glossary | What a term the standard defines means, and which criteria it governs |
| ultra11y_guidance | The before/after implementation pattern, inherited through the WCAG mapping when the pack has none |
| ultra11y_method | The work plan: what the engine settles, what needs a render, what is yours |
ultra11y_method is the one to call first. It partitions the standard into evidence tiers —
source, cross-file, rendered-page, browser, judgment, out-of-scope — from the
engine's own per-criterion rule applicability, never from guessing at the wording of a test.
For RGAA it reports that 56 of 106 criteria declare that no engine rule can evidence them.
That is the standard saying they are yours, and a plan that hides it reads as coverage that
does not exist.
standard carries no enum, deliberately: a country pack arrives with a project, so an enum
pinned when the tool list was built would reject a pack that is perfectly valid for the
project being asked about. The handler validates against the registry and names what it knows.
--allow-write additionally exposes ultra11y_fix (safe codemods, dry-run by
default) and ultra11y_init (hook/CI/baseline) — the tools that change your
project. ultra11y_scan is declared but declines over MCP: it drives a headless
browser and may pull a Docker image, which is not a subprocess lifecycle a
long-lived server should own. It tells you to run it from the CLI and re-audit.
Every tool audits exactly what the CLI would: the rendered captures and the page
snapshots under .ultra11y/ are ingested here too, so the server never reports a
smaller audit than the same command run by hand.
Pass --cwd <dir> at startup to dedicate the server to one project — cwd then
becomes optional on every tool.
Prompts — the workflow, not just the tools
| Prompt | Arguments | What it drives |
|--------|-----------|----------------|
| audit_wcag | cwd, globs?, standard? | audit → adjudicate → rule on each → report → check, with the untested criteria named |
| adjudicate_criteria | cwd, standard? | What alt-text relevance, link purpose, heading structure and reading order actually ask |
| review_diff_a11y | cwd, since? | Audit exactly the diff, refute the false positives, state the residual risks |
Each carries the coverage arithmetic: of the 55 WCAG 2.2 AA criteria the static engine decides a handful, a browser decides fourteen, and thirty-eight are yours.
Resources — the documentation, and the standards themselves
SKILL.md and all 37 references/*.md are served under skill://, read off
disk at request time — so a documentation fix reaches every client without a
rebuild.
The standards are served too, under std://, because in MCP documentation is a
resource, not a tool call:
std://rgaa/criteria/8.3 std://rgaa/glossary/lien std://rgaa/method
std://rgaa/themes/8 std://rgaa/guidance/13.2 std://rgaa/pack.json
std://wcag/criteria/1.4.3 std://wcag/glossary std://wcag/methodresources/list carries a bounded index per standard; the per-item URIs are
templates (resources/templates/list), because enumerating RGAA's 106
criteria and 119 glossary terms would bloat every client's listing and go stale
the moment a project's own pack registers.
Two things worth knowing:
- A criterion nobody tested is untested, never conformant. Every tool description and every prompt says so, because the failure mode here is not a wrong answer — it is a confident silence.
- The HTTP transport binds
127.0.0.1and refuses anything else unless you pass--allow-remote. This server reads local files; an exposed port is a read-anything primitive for whoever finds it.
Standards packs (RGAA France first; add your country)
WCAG 2.2 AA is the engine's canonical key. Each country standard ships as an in-repo standards pack — a small JSON that maps the national standard's criteria onto WCAG success criteria — so the same audit re-keys to any standard:
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs report --in audits/audit-latest.json --standard rgaa # → audits/rgaa-YYYY-MM-DD.md
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs criteria --standard rgaa 8.3 # a pack criterion (+ its WCAG SCs)RGAA 4.1.2 (France) ships as the flagship pack. Section 508 (US), EN 301 549 (EU) and
others are welcome — adding a country is a single PR (pack JSON + one registration line +
a test). See CONTRIBUTING.md and skills/ultra11y/references/standards.md.
Scale, fixes, and repo automation
- Scale — the engine streams file-by-file (bounded memory), audits only markup,
and lets you focus:
--changed/--since(git diff only), priority ordering (layouts/templates/shared components first), content de-duplication, and an explicit--max-filescap with logged truncation. Seereferences/scale.md. - Fixes —
fixputs the fixes in place (native-first, anti-hallucination): deterministic auto-codemods, fill-inTODOplaceholders for the agent to complete, and judgment-only proposals.--dry-runis the default;--writeapplies but only after a re-audit proves no new non-conformity, and never on lossy JSX/TSX. Seereferences/fix.md. - During your E2E run —
import { checkA11y } from "ultra11y/playwright"(orultra11y/cypress+ultra11y/cypress/plugin) audits a targeted page inside the test run you already have;render --e2estill writes install-free fixtures for a repo that does not depend on ultra11y, and the two cannot drift (the fixtures interpolate the published module's tables, and a test gates both over the same findings). Cypress now feeds the pixel tier too, viaafter:screenshot.checkA11y(page, { report: true })emits the per-page report straight out of the run. The audit runs, so the page is checked in the state your test built (logged in, form filled, modal open) — state a separatescanrun does not have. Each checked page is persisted as a snapshot (.ultra11y/pages/<id>/: the whole rendered document + computed styles + boxes), which is the durable half: the same page re-audits offline, with no browser, so CI and the per-page report work from it. Because a snapshot is a full document, the page-scoped rules finally run — RGAA 8.3 (lang), 8.5/8.6 (title) — and every finding carries both its page and the source file that rendered it. Seereferences/e2e.mdandreferences/pages.md. - In your browser — a Chrome extension (
extension/) audits the page you are looking at: a staging build, a page behind a login you walked through by hand. It is a client of the side-car, not a second engine — it fetches the engine's own collector rather than copying it, its manifest can reach loopback and nothing else, and the popup decides nothing the engine did not. Seereferences/extension.md. - While you build —
dev --nextwrites a one-line Next overlay component anddevstarts a loopback side-car: a floating panel lists the current page's non-conformities as you browse, each linking to itsfile:linein your editor, andhttp://127.0.0.1:4111shows the per-page grid accumulating. The overlay detaches itself before collecting — otherwise it would audit itself and shift every element index — and renders nothing outside development. Seereferences/devtools.md. - A country standard is adjudicated at its OWN granularity — 99 of RGAA's 106 criteria can
only ever derive
manual, so ~93% of an RGAA audit is settled by the agent.verify --manual --standard rgaanow keys the worklist by RGAA criteria, each carrying its numbered tests in full, its technical note, its particular cases, its guidance and the glossary definitions its tests cite (119 entries that previously had no reader). AnormativeRefmust cite one of the item's own tests — the laxer check accepted a WCAG id that happened to collide with an unrelated RGAA test number. Verdicts fold into a separatepackAdjudicationlayer so a pack decision never rewrites the WCAG core. Seereferences/judgment.md. - Rendered tier (offline) — six rules read a snapshot's browser-only signals inside the
ordinary
audit: no browser, no Docker, no running server.rendered-contrastmeasures contrast on the computed styles (the inline-literal rule could only see colours written in the markup);rendered-contrast-pixelmeasures it on the screenshot for text over a gradient or image, wherebackground-coloris transparent and every CSSOM-based checker — axe-core included — is blind;rendered-nontext-contrastdecides whether a form control's boundary is perceivable (RGAA 3.3); and two more read the stylesheet itself, which is the only place they exist: a focus indicator removed with nothing put back (10.7, until now reachable only by a live browser probe) and an orientation lock (13.9).rendered-link-colour-onlymakes RGAA 10.6 decidable at all. Each can say "I don't know": an unresolvable backdrop, a varied region, a cross-origin stylesheet, abox-shadowthat might be the boundary — all leave the criterion undecided rather than guessed, and without signals the rules do not fire, so no pre-existing verdict changes.tests/rgaa-coverage.test.tsratchets the result: 48 of 106 RGAA criteria now map onto an engine rule, up from 43, and the number can only go up. - Every scanned page is a snapshot —
scanno longer keeps only findings: each page it visits is persisted to.ultra11y/pages/<id>/(--no-snapshotopts out). That is what turns a URL into a real per-page verdict — a page known only by its URL can never be conforming by silence, so a sitemap-driven audit used to produce an almost empty grid. With a snapshot the page-scoped rules run (RGAA 8.3 / 8.5 / 8.6), the DOM JavaScript built at runtime is audited like any other markup, and the page re-audits offline, with no browser. The collection happens on the pristine page — before axe injects its source and before any probe fills an input or resizes the viewport — otherwise the snapshot would record our own instrumentation instead of the site. - Page by page — RGAA is a per-page norm; the engine's verdict is scope-wide.
pagesbridges the two: one row per criterion, one column per page URL, embedded inreportand rebuilt from a committedaudit.jsonalone. The per-page status is not recomputed — a per-page view of the audit runs through the very same projection the report uses, so grid and report agree by construction. Two rules hold the line: a finding is attributed to a page only when something says so (else it is counted as unattributed, never spread across pages), and a criterion is conforming by silence only on a page whose real rendered DOM was audited. Andpages --format report [--split page]turns that into the deliverable an auditor hands over: one dossier per page — identity, screenshot, rate, every criterion of the standard with its status on that page, then each non-conformity as the ordinary auditor block. It re-decides nothing and invents no format, so a page sheet and the compliance report cannot disagree;checkgates it against invented criteria like any other report. Seereferences/pages.md. - A shipped GitHub Action —
uses: maxgfr/ultra11y@v5audits the code (PR diff) and, optionally, the pages (it can start your app, wait for it, then scan real URLs or your declared sample). The engine ships inside the action, so there is nothing to install and nosetup-node. The gate runs last, after SARIF, annotations, the summary, the sticky PR comment and the report — a red job is never a dead end.adjudicate: api|agentoptionally rules on the judgment criteria that would otherwise stay « à évaluer » in CI, reading its key from the job environment and skipping itself without one.ultra11y init --ciwrites a workflow using it. Seereferences/ci.md. - Two PR comments, not one —
comment-kind: digest(the default) posts the distinct defects a reviewer can act on;comment-kind: pagesposts the page-by-page grid: one row per page with its basis, its rate and its denominator, then the non-conforming criteria of each failing page. Each kind is keyed by its own sticky marker, so a workflow that gates code in one job and sweeps pages in another keeps both comments — sharing a marker is how a 684-occurrence sweep silently overwrote a four-finding gate, and the actionable half is the one that vanished. - CI surfaces — a red job says that the build broke, not where.
--format sarifemits SARIF 2.1.0 for GitHub code scanning, so each finding lands as an inline annotation on the causing line of the PR;--format githubdoes the same via::error::workflow commands plus a$GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARYtable, for plans without code scanning. Alert identity reuses the baseline'sfindingId, so an alert survives line drift; a URL-keyed finding gets no location rather than a guessed one. Run it fromreport --standard rgaafor pack-keyed output. Seereferences/ci.md. - Automation —
init --hook(default) wires a zero-dependency git pre-commit gate over the strict staged snapshot: it audits the exact index blobs, auto-applies the safe fixes and re-stages them, and blocks only on judgment issues.init --baseline/--ciis the opt-in regression variant (hook + committed baseline / GitHub Actions job) that fails only on new non-conformities, not the existing backlog. Seereferences/automation.md.
Optional model tier (judge) — for the runs with no agent in the loop
Inside a coding agent the judgment criteria are the agent's to rule on. Outside one — CI, a
browser extension, an E2E run — nobody does, so they stay « à évaluer ». judge adjudicates
them with a model, and is a caller, not a second judge: the worklist, the evidence and the
prompt are verify --manual's own, and the verdicts pass through the same fail-closed gate
an agent's do. An unjustified C, an NC citing a line that does not resolve, a verdict for a
criterion nobody asked about, or an incomplete run are all refused — and a rejected
adjudication leaves the audit untouched. All-manual with reasons is accepted, because that is
a correct answer. It is the only part of the tool that takes an API key; without one the
command explains itself and exits, and nothing else changes.
The GitHub Action wires this as adjudicate: api, and offers adjudicate: agent as the other
half — the same worklist handed to a claude-code-action run, which can open the cited files
instead of ruling from harvested evidence alone. Both end in the same fail-closed gate; they
differ in evidence, not in trust. Both read ANTHROPIC_API_KEY from the job environment,
never from an input, and skip themselves when it is absent — which is exactly what a fork's
pull request looks like, so the job stays green and the criteria stay « à évaluer ». See
references/ci.md for the cost per run and for gate-adjudicated, which lets a model-ruled
non-conformity fail the build at the price of a red/green that no longer reproduces.
Optional dynamic tier (axe-core)
scan runs axe-core in a headless browser to decide the needs-rendering criteria the static engine leaves as residual risks — chiefly computed colour contrast (1.4.3) plus a 320px reflow check (1.4.10) and a render cross-check of the structural rules. Two runtimes (default --runtime auto): --runtime local uses a Playwright that resolves from your project (--cwd) — no Docker — and additionally probes focus visibility (2.4.7), 200% zoom (1.4.4), text spacing (1.4.12) and content-on-hover (1.4.13), plus stateful probes (fill inputs then re-measure overflow, and a live-region probe for status messages 4.1.3 — opt out with --no-interact, --interact-clicks for authed-scan button clicks), and takes --storage-state for authenticated pages; --runtime docker falls back to a self-contained image built on first use. --merge folds the findings into a static AuditResult, upgrading manual criteria to C/NC. A country-standard audit scans its declared page sample with scan --sample (lint it first with sample check):
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs audit "src/**/*.html" --out audits --json > /dev/null
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs scan http://localhost:3000 --runtime local --cwd . --merge audits/audit-latest.json --out audits
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs report --in audits/audit-latest.json --out auditsOnly the Docker runtime needs Docker. --runtime local needs a Chromium binary (npx playwright install chromium) plus @playwright/test and @axe-core/playwright — which come with the npm package, since they are its own dependencies; the audited project's own copies take precedence when it has them. Running the engine as a standalone skill bundle is the exception: an installed skill has no node_modules beside it, so there the two packages must be in the audited project, reachable from --cwd. The engine bundle itself stays dependency-free either way. The Docker runner + Dockerfile are embedded in the engine and mirrored under docker/ (with a docker-compose.yml). See skills/ultra11y/references/dynamic.md.
Typical audit flow:
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs audit "src/**/*.html" --json > audit.json
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs report --in audit.json --out audits # audits/wcag-YYYY-MM-DD.md
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs check --report audits/wcag-YYYY-MM-DD.md # integrity gateA report someone will actually open
--html turns the audit into a page: audits/index.html as the entry point, plus — from
report — a detachable single file that prints to PDF. Self-contained — no script, no
external asset, nothing pointing outside the directory — and it passes this engine's own
accessibility audit, which is the least a tool like this owes. pages --html writes the
navigable sheets only: one composite per artifact, or every inlined crop travels twice.
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs report --in audit.json --html --evidence --out audits
node scripts/ultra11y.mjs pages --in audit.json --format report --split page \
--evidence --html --out audits/pages--evidence illustrates each non-conformity with an annotated crop of the offending
element, cut from the page snapshot: selectorHint is lossy, and a rendered-tier finding on
a client-rendered page is anchored at dom.html:2 whatever it is really about. It illustrates
the Markdown conformance report as much as the HTML — one set of files in assets/, referenced
by every document that shows the defect — so --html is not required to get pictures.
It needs snapshots, and it says per page and per criterion what it could not draw and why — an occurrence with no picture must never read as an occurrence with no defect. It distinguishes an occurrence folded into another's picture from a distinct defect a limit cut off, because only the second is a gap.
In the GitHub Action both are on by default, so the uploaded artifact has a front door
without changing a workflow. See references/ci.md.
The skill (skills/ultra11y/SKILL.md + references/) teaches the agent when and how to run these, how to complete the manual criteria, and the native-first authoring doctrine.
Development
pnpm install
pnpm test # vitest
pnpm run typecheck
pnpm run build # tsup → scripts/ultra11y.mjs (engine) + dist/ (the e2e plugins)
pnpm run check:build # asserts every committed artefact is reproducible from its source
pnpm run build:wcag # re-derive src/data/wcag.json from the vendored W3C source
pnpm run build:pack:rgaa # re-build the RGAA pack from the vendored DINUM source
pnpm run build:criteria # regenerate skills/ultra11y/references/criteria.md
pnpm run build:icons # re-generate the browser extension's icons from their sourceReleases are cut automatically by semantic-release on push to main (GitHub release +
npm publish via OIDC trusted publishing, plus the moving v2 major tag). The version bump is
decided by Conventional Commits: a commit whose subject carries no feat:/fix: prefix
is analysed as no release, so a change that must ship needs at least one conventional commit
in the range — otherwise the major alias and npm keep serving the previous version while main
moves on.
Data & licensing
- ultra11y's code: MIT (see
LICENSE). - The WCAG 2.2 success-criteria dataset (
src/data/wcag.json) is derived from the official W3C source (w3c/wcag); WCAG 2.2 is © W3C, reused under the W3C Document License (only SC ids/titles/levels are reproduced) — seeNOTICE. - The RGAA pack (
src/data/standards/rgaa.json,rgaa.glossary.json) is derived from the official RGAA 4.1.2 reference published by DINUM/DISIC, under the Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0 — seeNOTICE. Attribution: « RGAA 4.1.2 — DINUM ». - The report format is inspired by DINUM/etalab-ia audit conventions; the native-first authoring rules are adapted from the SocialGouv accessibility skill. No source code was copied.
