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Azure DevOps Flavor

For projects hosted on Azure DevOps wikis or repositories that use Azure DevOps Markdown.

Config name: azure_devops
Aliases: azure, ado

Supported Patterns

Colon Code Fences (Mermaid and other diagrams)

Azure DevOps uses ::: as a code fence marker for Mermaid diagrams and other block content:

::: mermaid
sequenceDiagram
    Christie->>Josh: Hello Josh, how are you?
    Josh-->>Christie: Great!
:::

The opener is ::: followed by at least one non-whitespace character (the content type). The closer is a bare :::. Up to three leading spaces are allowed on both lines; four or more leading spaces disqualify the opener.

Treated as opaque code blocks: All content between the opener and closer is treated as a code block. Lint rules that inspect prose — MD013 (line length), MD034 (bare URLs), link validation, and all similar rules — do not fire inside colon fences.

Affected rules: MD013, MD031, MD034, MD046, MD048, and any rule that skips code block content.

Opener syntax

Input Treated as opener?
mermaid Yes
:::mermaid Yes (no space between ::: and type)
<1–3 spaces>::: mermaid Yes (0–3 leading spaces allowed)
<4 spaces>::: mermaid No (4 spaces = CommonMark indented code block)
<tab>::: mermaid No (tab-indented)
::: (no type after) No (bare ::: without a type is a closer, not an opener)

MD031 enforcement

MD031 (blanks around fences) enforces blank lines before and after colon fences, the same as for backtick/tilde fences:

<!-- bad: missing blank lines -->
Some text
::: mermaid
diagram
:::
More text

<!-- good: blank lines present -->
Some text

::: mermaid
diagram
:::

More text

Differences from Pandoc

Azure DevOps :::lang and Pandoc ::: use the same opening syntax, but with different semantics:

Platform ::: semantics Content linted?
Azure DevOps Opaque code fence (like a backtick fence) No
Pandoc Fenced div (transparent Markdown block) Yes

When using the azure_devops flavor, Pandoc div detection is not active. When using the pandoc flavor, colon code fence suppression is not active.

Rule Behavior Changes

Rule Standard Behavior Azure DevOps Behavior
MD013 Check line length everywhere Skip lines inside colon fences
MD031 Blanks around backtick/tilde fences Also enforce blanks around :::lang fences
MD034 Flag all bare URLs Skip URLs inside colon fences
MD046 Detect code block style Ignore backtick/tilde markers inside colon fences
MD048 Detect fence style Ignore backtick/tilde markers inside colon fences

All rules that respect in_code_block automatically skip colon fence content.

Configuration

[global]
flavor = "azure_devops"

Or using an alias:

[global]
flavor = "ado"

Or per-file:

[per-file-flavor]
"wiki/**/*.md" = "azure_devops"

Azure DevOps wiki files use plain .md extensions — there is no automatic file-extension detection. Opt in explicitly.

CLI Usage

rumdl check --flavor azure_devops docs/
rumdl check --flavor azure docs/
rumdl check --flavor ado docs/

When to Use

Use the Azure DevOps flavor when:

  • You write Markdown for an Azure DevOps wiki.
  • Your files contain :::mermaid or ::: blocks that are treated as opaque diagrams.
  • You are getting false positives from MD013 or link rules inside diagram blocks.

Do not use this flavor for Pandoc, Docusaurus, or VuePress projects — those platforms use ::: with different (non-opaque) semantics. Use pandoc for Pandoc projects or standard for Docusaurus/VuePress.

See Also