Checks

overfull check runs five checks. Each reads files a build already produced (the .log, the .aux or .bcf, the PDF, the .bib, the .tex sources). None of them change your files. The references check only writes its lookup cache, in your user cache folder (see Configuration).

Check	Reads	Answers
build	.log	Did TeX report errors?
output	.log, PDF	Did problems reach the PDF?
references	.bib, .aux/.bcf	Do the cited works exist and match?
accessibility	PDF, veraPDF	Is the PDF tagged and accessible?
venue	PDF, .aux, .tex	Does it meet the venue’s rules?

Run some of them with --checks:

overfull check --checks build,output

Severities and statuses

Every problem has a severity:

• error: the paper is wrong or will be rejected. Examples: ?? in the PDF, a reference that matches no indexed work, over the page limit.
• warning: likely a problem that needs a human look. Examples: bib metadata that differs from the indexed record, an overfull box wider than 10pt.
• info: could not be checked automatically, or advice. Example: a website reference that no index covers.

Each check gets a status: fail if it has any error, warn if it has any warning, pass otherwise, and skipped (with a reason) when its inputs are missing, for example no PDF yet, --offline, or accessibility: off in the profile. The report’s overall status is the worst of the checks that ran.

overfull check exits with 1 on fail. With --fail-on warning it also exits with 1 on warn. Every rule has an id; overfull explain <rule> describes it and overfull explain --list lists them all. The ids below are the real ones.

build

Parses the TeX log for errors (lines starting with !, or file:line: message with -file-line-error). Follow-on errors within a few lines in the same file are folded into the first one, so you see the root cause (related counts the folded ones). It works with LuaLaTeX, pdfLaTeX and XeLaTeX logs, and tracks which file each error came from.

Common ids: undefined-control-sequence, missing-dollar, missing-brace, missing-package, missing-file, font-not-found, biblatex-error, tex-error (any other TeX error). overfull explain --list shows all rules with check build.

It cannot tell you about errors TeX did not report, and its line numbers are TeX’s, which can point slightly after the real mistake.

output

Finds problems that reach the PDF:

• undefined citations and cross-references (undefined-citation, undefined-reference), and ?? or [?] in the PDF text with the page (pdf-unresolved-reference, pdf-unresolved-citation);
• a missing, stale or empty bibliography (bibliography-missing, bibliography-stale, empty-bibliography) and rerun-needed when LaTeX reports “Label(s) may have changed”;
• missing figure files (missing-figure);
• overfull boxes above 10pt (overfull-box; smaller ones are ignored);
• duplicate labels (duplicate-label), font substitutions (font-substitution), characters missing from the font (missing-glyph), floats taller than the page (float-too-large), fonts without a requested feature (font-feature-missing) and headings simplified in PDF bookmarks (pdf-string-token).

It cannot judge whether a figure is in the right place or whether the layout looks good. Use overfull pages to look.

references

Looks up every cited entry in your bibliography in CrossRef and doi.org (for DOIs), the arXiv API (for arXiv ids), and otherwise by title in CrossRef, DBLP and arXiv, plus OpenAlex when OPENALEX_API_KEY is set. Each entry ends up verified, mismatch, not-found, unverifiable or, if the lookup itself failed, error. The rule ids are reference-not-found, reference-metadata-mismatch, reference-unverifiable and reference-lookup-failed. The check also reports citation-key-missing (cited key not in any .bib file) and bib-parse-error (malformed entry). See References for details.

It cannot tell whether a real paper supports the sentence that cites it. That is your job.

accessibility

Reads facts from the PDF: whether it is tagged (pdf-not-tagged), its language and title (pdf-missing-language, pdf-missing-title), which figures in the structure tree have alt text (figure-missing-alt), embedded fonts (font-not-embedded), and whether it claims PDF/UA (pdfua-not-claimed, info). If verapdf is installed (the Docker image includes it), the check runs it and includes its failures as verapdf-<clause> rules. Without it, the check reports verapdf-not-run: info, or a warning when the CLI could have run veraPDF through Docker and the profile requires accessibility. --no-verapdf skips it on purpose. If veraPDF runs but cannot validate the PDF, the result is verapdf-error (warning).

The profile’s accessibility setting decides the severity: required makes problems errors, recommended makes them warnings, off skips the check.

It cannot judge whether alt text is accurate, whether reading order makes sense, or whether colours have enough contrast. See Accessibility for a short manual checklist.

venue

Applies the rules of the profile in overfull.yml:

• page limit, optionally counting only up to \label{overfull:main-end} (page-limit-exceeded, page-limit-label-missing, page-limit-unchecked);
• paper size (paper-size-mismatch);
• anonymity for double-blind review: PDF author metadata, \author content, acknowledgments, and phrases such as “our previous work” (anonymity-pdf-author, anonymity-author-named, anonymity-acknowledgments, anonymity-self-reference);
• presence of an AI-use disclosure, and whether it is still a placeholder (disclosure-missing, disclosure-placeholder);
• arXiv rules: absolute paths, file names with spaces, .eps figures when the log shows pdfLaTeX, minted or shell-escape, the .bbl file (arxiv-absolute-path, arxiv-filename-space, arxiv-eps-pdflatex, arxiv-shell-escape, arxiv-missing-bbl).

It cannot read a venue’s call for papers. The rules are what you configure. It cannot detect every way to de-anonymise a paper, such as links to your own repository. See Venues.