Hi — you're right that these Databricks-specific rule codes (DB01, DB03, etc.) are not documented anywhere publicly. The notebook editor docs only mention them as a configuration example without explaining what each rule checks.
What We Know
The DB* rules are Databricks-written diagnostics layered on top of the standard linters (Ruff, Pylint, Pyright, Flake8). They cover Databricks-specific patterns — things like PySpark API usage, dbutils calls, or notebook-specific syntax that standard linters wouldn't catch. But there's no public rule index like Ruff or Pylint provide.
How to Identify Which Rule Is Firing
When you see a highlighted error in the notebook editor, hover over the squiggly underline — the tooltip should show the rule code (e.g., DB01) and a short description. This is currently the only way to map a code to its meaning.
You can then selectively disable it:
# pyproject.toml (place in your notebook's ancestor path or ~/home)
[tool.databricks]
disabled_rules = ['DB01']
If You Want to Disable Broader Categories
You can also toggle the three highlighting categories independently via Settings → Developer:
- Python syntax error highlighting — core syntax errors (red)
- Python format error highlighting — formatting issues like line length (yellow/red, experimental)
- Python type error highlighting — type checking like missing args, wrong types (DBR 16.0+, experimental)
If the specific errors you want to suppress fall under formatting or type checking, toggling those off may be simpler than hunting individual rule codes.
Requesting Better Documentation
I'd suggest filing a docs feedback request via the "Was this page helpful?" widget on the notebook editor docs page — asking for a rule reference table would be a reasonable ask.
Docs:
Anuj Lathi
Solutions Engineer @ Databricks
