maat baseline

Marks all unbaselined findings currently stored in the ledger as temporarily accepted debt.

maat check --ledger
maat baseline
maat baseline --expires-in 14
maat --config ./path/to/maat.config.ts baseline --expires-in 14

What a baseline means

A baseline means: "we saw this finding, we are not fixing it in this pass, and we want to revisit it later."

Baselining is a suppression flag on a finding record. It does not mean the finding is good or fixed. It lets an existing codebase adopt maat without making every old finding block every run.

Expiry

Baselines expire. When a baseline expires, maat check fails until the team revisits the finding by fixing it, re-baselining it, promoting it, or enforcing it.

Permanent baselines are intentionally not supported.

Options

Option	Purpose
--expires-in <days>	Days until the baseline expires. Must be between 1 and 90. Default: 30.

Scope

maat baseline always baselines all unbaselined findings at once. There is no way to baseline a single finding by fingerprint. This is intentional: a baseline represents a team decision to accept the current state of the codebase as a whole, not a per-finding judgment.

If you need to address a single finding, fix the underlying issue and let maat check --ledger resolve it automatically, or use maat resolve <fingerprint> to mark it as fixed.

When to use it

Use maat baseline for first adoption in a brownfield codebase. Use maat resolve when the underlying issue has been fixed and the exact fingerprint should be treated as a regression if it appears again.