Choosing an Organization in the CLI

Your license enumerates every organization you belong to. If that is only one, the CLI acts as that organization automatically and this page does not apply to you. If it is more than one, restore and analyze need to know which organization's rule profiles, entitlements, and namespace they should act under for the current run.

How the CLI picks an organization

The CLI resolves the acting organization in this order and stops at the first match:

1. org: <slug> in the hierarchically resolved .codecharter/config.yml (the value closest to the file being analyzed wins, per the usual config hierarchy). See Configuration file.
2. The CODECHARTER_ORG environment variable, if org: is not set.
3. Your license's sole organization, if it covers exactly one. This is the zero-configuration case and needs no org: or environment variable at all.
4. If none of the above resolves an organization and your license covers more than one, the CLI stops with an error and exit code 64, naming every organization your license covers and how to choose one.

# .codecharter/config.yml
org: vistron
profiles:
  - dotnet-rules@^2

# equivalent, without editing config.yml
export CODECHARTER_ORG=vistron
codecharter analyze MySolution.sln

If you name an organization that your license does not cover — a typo, or an organization you have since left — the CLI stops with exit code 6 and tells you which organizations the license does carry. Run codecharter update to refresh your license after joining a new organization; a cached license only reflects the memberships it was issued with.

Why this only shows up for multi-organization licenses

A single-organization license carries an implicit, unambiguous organization, so there is nothing to choose and the CLI proceeds exactly as before. The moment a second organization appears on your license — for example after being added to a second team — any command that needs to know "which organization's rules and quota apply here" becomes ambiguous unless you say so. This typically surfaces on the next CI run after being added to a second organization, before you have set org: anywhere: gate the config or the environment variable as part of onboarding to a second organization to avoid a broken build.

Profile references and organizations

A profile reference without a namespace (dotnet-rules@^2) resolves inside your currently selected organization. A namespaced reference (vistron/dotnet-rules@^2) can point at a different organization's profile than the one you are acting as; the CLI verifies your live membership in that organization before serving the profile, so access reflects your current memberships rather than what was true when your license was issued.

Exit codes

See the full table on Exit Codes.

Related pages

• Configuration file
• License File
• Credentials and precedence
• Exit Codes