diff --git a/hacking/yamlcheck.py b/hacking/yamlcheck.py
new file mode 100755
index 00000000000..c66d70db134
--- /dev/null
+++ b/hacking/yamlcheck.py
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+#!/usr/bin/python
+# long version of this one liner: python -c 'import yaml,sys;yaml.safe_load(sys.stdin)' < yamltest.txt
+import yaml
+import sys
+
+if len(sys.argv) > 1:
+    check_file = open(sys.argv[1])
+else:
+    check_file = sys.stdin
+
+try:
+    yaml.safe_load(check_file)
+except yaml.scanner.ScannerError as e:
+    sys.exit('Invalid YAML:\n%s' % str(e))
+
+print('valid YAML')