Validation¶

TaleNode validates your dialogue graph in real time and reports errors and warnings so you can fix issues before exporting.

Validation Panel¶

Toggle the validation panel from View > Validation Panel. The panel displays a list of issues found in the current graph.

The status bar at the bottom also shows a summary:

Green "No issues" — graph is clean
Yellow "N warning(s)" — only warnings
Red "N error(s), N warning(s)" — errors present

Click the validation summary in the status bar to toggle the panel.

Validation Checks¶

Errors¶

Check	Description
No Start node	The graph has no Start node. Every dialogue needs exactly one.

Warnings¶

Check	Description
Multiple Start nodes	More than one Start node exists. Only one entry point is expected.
Disconnected outputs	A non-End node has output ports with no outgoing connections.
Unreachable nodes	A node is not reachable from any Start node (BFS traversal).
Empty dialogue	A Dialogue node has empty or whitespace-only text.
Dead ends	A non-End node has output ports but no outgoing connections.

Navigating to Issues¶

Click on any issue in the validation panel to:

Select the problematic node
Center the canvas on that node

This makes it easy to find and fix issues in large graphs.

Common Fixes¶

No Start node

Right-click the canvas and add a Start node. Connect it to the beginning of your dialogue.

Disconnected outputs

Connect the node's output port to the next node in the flow, or add an End node if this is a terminal path.

Unreachable nodes

This node isn't connected to the main graph. Either wire it in or delete it if it's unused.

Empty dialogue

Select the Dialogue node and fill in the text field in the Inspector.

CLI Validation¶

You can validate a .talenode file from the command line without opening the GUI:

talenode validate project.talenode

Output shows all errors and warnings with node IDs. The command exits with code 1 if any errors are found, making it suitable for CI/CD pipelines.

  ERROR [node 3a7f1b2c]: No Start node found
  WARN  [node 9e4d5a8b]: Dialogue node has empty text
  WARN  [node c1f2e3d4]: Disconnected output port

1 error(s), 2 warning(s)

Tips¶

Tip

Fix all errors and warnings before exporting. While TaleNode will still export with warnings, your game engine may not handle disconnected or unreachable nodes gracefully.

Tip

Validation runs every frame, so issues appear and disappear as you edit. There's no need to manually trigger a validation pass.