• Concept
  • Version · 6.0
  • Govern

Severity and exit codes in policy check automation

Last updated: September 29, 2026

When you run policy checks manually, you can read the warnings from triggered checks in the CLI output. When your automation runs them, nobody is reading that output. The exit code is what your tools act on. Each triggered check returns the exit code you configured for its severity, and that code decides whether the job moves forward or stops.

You set each check’s severity, and the exit code it returns, when you configure the check in the web application or in your checks settings file.

Note: When multiple checks are triggered, Liquibase returns the highest exit code of all the triggered checks. This exit code can be detected and processed by automation tools with the echo $? command for Linux or the echo %ERRORLEVEL% command for Windows. This also holds inside a flow file: Liquibase returns the highest exit code among the triggered checks.

Policy check exit codes are set per check and are separate from the exit code Liquibase returns for a failed command.