MDS055: forbidden-paragraph-starts

Paragraphs must not begin with any configured prefix.

For each paragraph, the rule compares the leading characters of the paragraph’s plain text against every entry in starts:. The first matching prefix produces one diagnostic at the paragraph’s start line. Empty prefix entries are ignored. Tables (paragraphs whose first line starts with |) are skipped because their pipe-prefixed rows are not prose.

# Settings

# Config

Document-wide:

rules:
  forbidden-paragraph-starts:
    starts: ["We ", "The team "]

Per-section (via schema scope ):

kinds:
  runbook:
    schema:
      sections:
        - heading: "Diagnosis"
          rules:
            forbidden-paragraph-starts:
              starts: ["TL;DR"]

Disable:

rules:
  forbidden-paragraph-starts: false

# Examples

# Good

# Title

The platform must investigate the failure before acting.

Operators should triage the alert and escalate as needed.

# Bad

# Title

We need to investigate the failure before acting.

# Meta-Information

• ID: MDS055
• Name: forbidden-paragraph-starts
• Status: ready
• Default: disabled
• Fixable: no
• Implementation: source
• Category: prose