GoldenCheck

Data validation that discovers rules from your data so you don't have to write them.

Every competitor makes you write rules first. GoldenCheck flips it: validate first, keep the rules you care about.

Why GoldenCheck?

Install

pip install goldencheck

With LLM boost support:

pip install goldencheck[llm]

Quick Start

# Scan a file — discovers issues, launches interactive TUI
goldencheck data.csv

# CLI-only output (no TUI)
goldencheck data.csv --no-tui

# With LLM enhancement (requires API key)
goldencheck data.csv --llm-boost --no-tui

# Validate against saved rules (for CI/pipelines)
goldencheck validate data.csv

# JSON output for CI integration
goldencheck data.csv --no-tui --json

How It Works

1. SCAN     →  goldencheck data.csv
                GoldenCheck profiles your data and discovers what "healthy" looks like

2. REVIEW   →  Interactive TUI shows findings sorted by severity
                Each finding has: description, affected rows, sample values

3. PIN      →  Press Space to promote findings into permanent rules
                Dismiss false positives — they won't come back

4. EXPORT   →  Press F2 to save rules to goldencheck.yml
                Human-readable YAML with your pinned rules

5. VALIDATE →  goldencheck validate data.csv
                Enforce rules in CI with exit codes (0 = pass, 1 = fail)

What It Detects

Column-Level Profilers

Cross-Column Profilers

Domain Packs

Improve detection accuracy with domain-specific type definitions:

goldencheck scan data.csv --domain healthcare   # NPI, ICD, insurance, patient types
goldencheck scan data.csv --domain finance      # accounts, routing, CUSIP, transactions
goldencheck scan data.csv --domain ecommerce    # SKUs, orders, tracking, products

Domain packs add semantic types that reduce false positives and improve classification for industry-specific data.

Schema Diff

Compare two versions of a data file:

goldencheck diff data.csv                  # compare against git HEAD
goldencheck diff old.csv new.csv           # compare two files
goldencheck diff data.csv --ref main       # compare against a branch

Auto-Fix

Apply automated fixes to clean your data:

goldencheck fix data.csv                          # safe: trim, normalize, fix encoding
goldencheck fix data.csv --mode moderate          # + standardize case
goldencheck fix data.csv --mode aggressive --force # + coerce types
goldencheck fix data.csv --dry-run                # preview changes

Watch Mode

Continuously monitor a directory for data quality:

goldencheck watch data/ --interval 30        # re-scan every 30s
goldencheck watch data/ --exit-on error      # CI mode: fail on first error

REST API

Run GoldenCheck as a microservice:

goldencheck serve --port 8000

# Scan via file upload
curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/scan --data-binary @data.csv

# Scan via URL
curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/scan/url -d '{"url": "https://example.com/data.csv"}'

Database Scanning

Scan tables directly — no CSV export needed:

pip install goldencheck[db]
goldencheck scan-db "postgresql://user:pass@host/db" --table orders
goldencheck scan-db "snowflake://..." --query "SELECT * FROM orders WHERE date > '2024-01-01'"

Scheduled Runs

Cron-like scheduling with webhook notifications:

goldencheck schedule data/*.csv --interval hourly --webhook https://hooks.slack.com/...
goldencheck schedule data/*.csv --interval daily --notify-on grade-drop

LLM Boost

Add --llm-boost to enhance profiler findings with LLM intelligence. The LLM receives a representative sample of your data and:

1. Finds issues profilers miss — semantic understanding (e.g., "12345" in a name column)
2. Upgrades severity — knows "emails should be required" even if the profiler only says "INFO"
3. Discovers relationships — identifies temporal ordering between columns like signup_date and last_login
4. Downgrades false positives — "mixed phone formats are common, not an error"

# Using OpenAI
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
goldencheck data.csv --llm-boost --llm-provider openai --no-tui

# Using Anthropic
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
goldencheck data.csv --llm-boost --no-tui

Cost: ~$0.01 per scan (one API call with representative samples, not per-row).

Budget control:

export GOLDENCHECK_LLM_BUDGET=0.50  # max spend per scan in USD

Configuration (goldencheck.yml)

version: 1

settings:
  sample_size: 100000
  fail_on: error

columns:
  email:
    type: string
    required: true
    format: email
    unique: true

  age:
    type: integer
    range: [0, 120]

  status:
    type: string
    enum: [active, inactive, pending, closed]

relations:
  - type: temporal_order
    columns: [start_date, end_date]

ignore:
  - column: notes
    check: nullability

Only pinned rules appear in this file — not every finding. The ignore list prevents dismissed findings from reappearing.

CLI Reference

Flags

Benchmarks

Speed

DQBench v1.0 — Head-to-Head

GoldenCheck's zero-config discovery outperforms every competitor — even when they have hand-written rules.

Run the benchmark yourself:

pip install dqbench goldencheck
dqbench run goldencheck

Detection Accuracy

Tested on a custom benchmark with 341 planted data quality issues across 9 categories.

v0.2.0 improvements: minority wrong-type detection, range profiler chaining, broader temporal heuristics, and confidence scoring pushed profiler-only recall from 87% to 100%.

Raha Benchmark Datasets

Tech Stack

Optional: Anthropic SDK / OpenAI SDK for LLM Boost | MCP SDK for MCP server

MCP Server (Claude Desktop)

GoldenCheck includes an MCP server for Claude Desktop integration:

pip install goldencheck[mcp]

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "goldencheck": {
      "command": "goldencheck",
      "args": ["mcp-serve"]
    }
  }
}

Available tools:

Remote MCP Server

GoldenCheck is available as a hosted MCP server on Smithery — connect from any MCP client without installing anything.

Claude Desktop / Claude Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "goldencheck": {
      "url": "https://goldencheck-mcp-production.up.railway.app/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

Local server:

pip install goldencheck[mcp]
goldencheck mcp-serve

19 tools available: scan files, validate rules, profile columns, health-score datasets, auto-configure validation, explain findings, compare domains, suggest fixes.

Jupyter / Colab

GoldenCheck renders rich HTML in Jupyter notebooks:

from goldencheck.engine.scanner import scan_file
from goldencheck.engine.confidence import apply_confidence_downgrade
from goldencheck.notebook import ScanResult

findings, profile = scan_file("data.csv")
findings = apply_confidence_downgrade(findings, llm_boost=False)

# Rich HTML display in notebooks
ScanResult(findings=findings, profile=profile)

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

License

MIT — see LICENSE

Part of the Golden Suite

Companion projects:

• dbt-goldencheck — data validation as a dbt test.
• goldencheck-types — community-contributed domain type packs.
• goldencheck-action — GitHub Action for CI with PR comments.