Skip to content
Ward

Quick start

From a supported Maven or Gradle project, detect the project, create a configuration, and run the gates:

Terminal window
ward detect
ward init
ward check

init starts an interactive wizard. To have your coding agent guide the setup and tune the rules to your code, install the agent skills and ask it to set up Ward.

For non-interactive setup, choose a preset or explicit gates:

Gradle projects use build.gradle or build.gradle.kts; Ward prefers ./gradlew and falls back to gradle when no wrapper is available.

Terminal window
ward init --preset standard --integration none
ward init --preset strict --integration claude-code
ward init --integration none --gate tests

A passing run ends with a summary such as:

Quality Gate: PASSED
7 passed · 0 failed · 0 skipped

Use ward check --format json for automation. The JSON contract guarantees that stdout contains only JSON; diagnostics go to stderr. If something does not work, run ward doctor. See commands, exit codes, and CI/CD.