--- /dev/null
+# CSS processors
+
+The linter supports current and future CSS syntax. This includes all standard CSS but also special features that use standard CSS syntactic structures, e.g. special at-rules, special properties, and special functions. Some CSS-*like* language extensions -- features that use non-standard syntactic structures -- are, as such, supported; however, since there are infinite processing possibilities, the linter cannot support everything.
+
+You can run the linter before or after your css processors. Depending on which processors you use, each approach has caveats:
+
+1. *Before*: Some plugins/processors might enable a syntax that isn't compatible with the linter.
+2. *After*: Some plugins/processors might generate CSS that is invalid against your linter config, causing violations that do not correspond to your original stylesheets.
+
+*In both cases you can either turn off the incompatible linter rule, or stop using the incompatible plugin/processor.* You could also approach plugin/processor authors and request alternate formatting options that will make their plugin/processor compatible with stylelint.
+
+## Parsing non-standard syntax
+
+By default, the linter can *parse* any the following non-standard syntaxes by using special PostCSS parsers:
+
+- SCSS (using [`postcss-scss`](https://github.com/postcss/postcss-scss))
+- Less (using [`postcss-less`](https://github.com/shellscape/postcss-less))
+- SugarSS (using [`sugarss`](https://github.com/postcss/sugarss))
+- HTML,
+[Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax),
+[Vue component](https://vue-loader.vuejs.org/)
+(using [`postcss-html`](https://github.com/gucong3000/postcss-html))
+
+*Non-standard syntaxes can automatically be inferred from the following file extensions, values for the `lang` or `type` attribute on `<style>` tags, and markers for Markdown code fences: `css`, `less`, `scss`, and `sss`.* If you would need to specify your non-standard syntax, though, both the [CLI](cli.md) and the [Node API](node-api.md) expose a `syntax` option.
+
+- If you're using the CLI, use the `syntax` flag like so: `stylelint ... --syntax scss`.
+- If you're using the Node API, pass in the `syntax` option like so: `stylelint.lint({ syntax: "sugarss", ... })`.
+
+Additionally, stylelint can accept a custom [PostCSS-compatible syntax](https://github.com/postcss/postcss#syntaxes) when using the CLI or Node API. For custom syntaxes, please use the `custom-syntax` and `customSyntax` options, respectively.
+
+- If you're using the CLI, use the `custom-syntax` flag like so: `stylelint ... --custom-syntax custom-syntax-module` or `stylelint ... --custom-syntax ./path/to/custom-syntax-module`.
+- If you're using the Node API, pass in the `customSyntax` option like so: `stylelint.lint({ customSyntax: path.join(process.cwd(), './path/to/custom-syntax-module') , ... })`.
+
+If you're using the linter as a [PostCSS Plugin](postcss-plugin.md), you'll need to use the special parser directly with PostCSS's `syntax` option like so:
+
+```js
+var postcss = require("postcss")
+var scss = require("postcss-scss")
+// or use "postcss-less", "sugarss", "postcss-sass", or "postcss-html"
+
+postcss([
+ require("stylelint"),
+ require("reporter")
+])
+ .process(css, {
+ from: "lib/app.css",
+ syntax: scss
+ })
+})
+```