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JSON Schema

Renovate provides JSON Schemas which can provide autocomplete, documentation and validation in your editor. Consult your editor's documentation for how to configure this functionality.

When Renovate creates an onboarding PR, it will automagically add the JSON Schema definition, like so:

{
  "$schema": "https://docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json",
  // ...
}

As well as the renovate-schema.json, which covers repository configuration, Renovate also provides configuration for other types of configuration.

The following JSON Schemas are available for use:

See below for more details on each of them.

Repository configuration (renovate-schema.json)

docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-schema.json covers any repository configuration options and is likely to be used in:

  • a repository onboarded to Renovate
  • any shared configuration presets
  • global self-hosted configuration (alongside configuration options only present in renovate-global-schema.json

Repository + inherited configuration (renovate-inherited-schema.json)

docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-inherited-schema.json covers any repository configuration options, and any inherited config options.

It is only likely to be used if you create an org-inherited-config.json (or override the filename with inheritConfigFileName) in your shared config repo.

Global self-hosted configuration (renovate-global-schema.json)

docs.renovatebot.com/renovate-global-schema.json covers any global self-hosted configuration, and is likely to be used in:

  • a config.js
  • command-line arguments

Usage with config.js

Unfortunately - at time of writing - Language Server Protocol (LSP) servers do no yet provide a way to use a JSON Schema to provide type hints in a JavaScript file.

Limitations

The JSON Schema is autogenerated from the configuration options that Renovate holds.

While we aim to provide relevant options, documentation and validation rules where possible, there may be times where there is a gap in the schema.

Additionally, some of Renovate's concepts cannot be validated through JSON Schema, as they require more complex checks that only happen in Renovate's codebase.

Using the JSON Schema is recommended for early feedback (in your editor, or for your agent) but it is recommended to look at the documentation around validating your config, for instance using renovate-config-validator, which will provide a more robust and accurate validation process.

Previous majors

The Renovate documentation site tracks the current release version of Renovate.

If you are using the current major version of Renovate, but not the most up-to-date version of Renovate, you may find that the JSON Schema describes a configuration option you do not yet have access to.

If you're using a previous major version of Renovate, there will likely be many differences between what you have available in your version of Renovate.

With this in mind, when Renovate releases a major version, we store an archive of the JSON Schema for the previous major version in Schema Store.

Note

Previous major versions are only available since Renovate 39 (2025-04-29).

For instance, if you are running Renovate 41, you will be able to use i.e. www.schemastore.org/renovate-41.json for your JSON Schema.