MT008: HasReadmeField

Overview

Property	Value
ID	MT008
Name	HasReadmeField
Group	metadata
Severity	WARNING

Description

Checks that the [project].readme field is defined in pyproject.toml.

The readme field specifies which file contains your package’s long description:

Displayed as the main content on your PyPI package page
Provides detailed information about installation and usage
Essential for user adoption and understanding

What it checks

The check verifies that pyproject.toml contains:

[project]
readme = "README.md"

Or uses the expanded format:

[project]
readme = {file = "README.md", content-type = "text/markdown"}

How to fix

Add the readme field to your pyproject.toml:

[project]
readme = "README.md"

Supported formats

Format	File extension	Content type
Markdown	`.md`	`text/markdown`
reStructuredText	`.rst`	`text/x-rst`
Plain text	`.txt`	`text/plain`

Explicit content type

For better compatibility, you can explicitly specify the content type:

[project]
readme = {file = "README.md", content-type = "text/markdown"}

Multiple files

To combine multiple files:

[project.readme]
content-type = "text/markdown"
text = """
# My Package

See [README](https://github.com/user/project#readme) for full documentation.
"""

Writing a good README

Your README should include:

Project name and description - What does it do?
Installation instructions - How to install
Quick start / Usage - Basic example
Documentation link - Where to learn more
License - Usage terms
Contributing - How to contribute

Example structure:

# My Package

Brief description of what the package does.

## Installation

pip install my-package

## Quick Start

from my_package import main
main()

## Documentation

Full documentation at https://my-package.readthedocs.io

## License

MIT License

Configuration

Skip this check

[tool.pycmdcheck]
skip = ["MT008"]

CLI

pycmdcheck --skip MT008