cspell ESLint plugin: support typos-only reporting (CLI --report typos / unknownWords report-common-typos)

[brennanmceachran]

Problem

We want to use @cspell/eslint-plugin for AST-aware spellchecking (identifiers / strings / template strings / JSX text / comments) in a codebase, but only report likely typos (the equivalent of cspell lint --report typos / config unknownWords: report-common-typos).

Today the ESLint plugin reports lots of “Unknown word” findings (proper nouns, product names, acronyms, etc.) unless a large allowlist is maintained. The CLI’s typos-only modes are a perfect fit, but they don’t seem available in the plugin.

What we tried

Configured the rule with a configFile plus attempted to pass unknownWords through the rule options. ESLint fails config validation because the plugin schema does not allow it.

Example config

'@cspell/spellchecker': ['warn', {
  configFile: "./tooling/spellcheck/cspell.json",
  checkComments: true,
  checkIdentifiers: true,
  checkStrings: true,
  checkStringTemplates: true,
  checkJSXText: true,
  ignoreImports: true,
  ignoreImportProperties: true,
  cspell: {
    unknownWords: "report-common-typos",
  },
}],

ESLint error

Unexpected property "unknownWords". Expected properties: "allowCompoundWords", "caseSensitive", "dictionaries", "dictionaryDefinitions", "enabled", "flagWords", "ignoreRegExpList", "ignoreWords", "import", "includeRegExpList", "language", "words".

Evidence from plugin code

In the published package (we had @cspell/eslint-plugin@9.4.0), the autogenerated options schema sets additionalProperties: false and the cspell sub-options do not include any report/unknownWords control.

• packages/cspell-eslint-plugin built schema (published): dist/generated/schema.cjs
  • additionalProperties: false at the top
  • cspell option object includes words, flagWords, ignoreWords, etc. but no unknownWords / report

Also, the rule appears to report all issues returned by spellCheckAST without filtering beyond Forbidden vs Unknown.

Requested feature

Expose a way to enable CLI-equivalent typos-only reporting in the ESLint plugin. For example:

• new rule option: report: "all" | "simple" | "typos" | "flagged" (matching CLI --report)
• or allow passing through unknownWords settings (like report-common-typos) into the underlying checker

This would make the plugin usable in real-world codebases without maintaining huge allowlists, while still catching genuine typos like fragement→fragment, preceeding→preceding, etc.

Environment

• ESLint: 9.39.2
• @cspell/eslint-plugin: 9.4.0
• Node: 22.x

[Jason3S]

@brennanmceachran,

Thank you. It was an oversight to not have that setting available.

As a workaround, you can add the unknownWords setting to ./tooling/spellcheck/cspell.json.

or make a new cspell config file just to use with ESLint:

./tooling/spellcheck/eslint.cspell.json:

{
  "import": ["./cspell.json"],
  "unknownWords": "report-common-typos"
}

'@cspell/spellchecker': ['warn', {
  configFile: "./tooling/spellcheck/eslint.cspell.json",