Gherkin Formatter & Validator

Gherkin is the plain-language format behind behaviour-driven development (BDD). A .feature file describes one capability of the system as a set of concrete examples written in Given / When / Then steps, and frameworks such as Cucumber (Java, JavaScript, Ruby), SpecFlow and Reqnroll (.NET), Behave (Python) and Karate bind each step to automation code. Because product owners, testers and developers all read the same file, keeping it tidy and consistent matters as much as keeping code formatted.

The formatter rewrites your file with consistent indentation (2 or 4 spaces, or tabs), normalized keyword casing and spacing, one blank line between scenarios, and table columns padded so every pipe lines up. Escaped pipes (\|) and other escapes inside cells are preserved, doc strings (""" or ```) keep their content and relative indentation, and comments stay where they were. Nothing about the meaning of the file changes, so the formatted output is safe to commit.

The validator reports problems with line numbers: content before the Feature: line, steps outside a scenario, a Scenario Outline without Examples, <placeholders> that have no matching Examples column (and columns no step uses), table rows with the wrong number of cells, unclosed doc strings, duplicate or empty scenarios, scenarios that start with And or But, and a When that follows a Then (usually a sign that one scenario tests two behaviours). Only English keywords are recognised; a # language: header for another language is reported instead of being guessed at.

The Outline preview tab expands every Scenario Outline into the concrete scenarios your test runner will execute, substituting each Examples row into the name, steps, data tables and doc strings. It is a quick way to check that every row produces sensible steps. To pick which combinations of inputs deserve a row, use the pairwise test generator, and fill data tables with realistic values from the mock data generator. When your step definitions need stable element locators, the E2E locator generator suggests them for Playwright, Cypress and Selenium.