Link Checker CI - Tracking & Improvements #664
Description
Overview
Automated GitHub Action that runs monthly (1st of each month at 9am UTC) scanning the built Jekyll site for dead links, creating an issue report when errors are found.
- Tool: lychee via
lycheeverse/lychee-action@v2 - Workflow:
.github/workflows/link-check.yml - Trigger: scheduled (monthly), manual
workflow_dispatch, orrepository_dispatch
Setup History
| Issue | What happened |
|---|---|
| #841 | First attempt — scanned raw source files instead of the built _site, so Liquid templates like {{page.url}} showed up as broken file:// links |
| #862 | Closer — scanned _site but still had noise from unbuilt templates and missing exclusions |
| Current | Builds the Jekyll site first, then scans _site only. Profile URLs for LinkedIn, CodePen, Instagram, and Threads excluded to avoid rate-limit false positives |
Current Excluded URLs
These are excluded because the services rate-limit or block automated crawlers:
^https://www\.linkedin\.com/in/rehan-butt/^https://codepen\.io/rehanbutt^https://instagram\.com/naher94^https://www\.threads\.net/@naher94(profile)^https://threads\.net/intent/(share/intent links — Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1124)
Known Issues & Open Items
- Link count fluctuation (Lychee Link Count Dropped #1115, Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1090) — Total link count dropped from ~2787 (Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1039) to 219 (Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1090) then back to ~2992 (Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1124). Needs investigation — could be a lychee version difference, caching behavior, or build output changes
- Checkbox output format — lychee's checklist/checkbox output doesn't render correctly in GitHub issues (lychee-action#274, comment)
-
Custom accepted status codes— Added--accept 100..=103,200..=299,403to reduce false positives (lychee#1661) -
Cache support— lychee-action#278 -
Threads intent URLs flagged as 429— Excludedthreads.net/intent/pattern (Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1124)
Related Reports
Open reports to triage:
- Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1039
- Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1090
- Dead Links Found - Link Checker Report #1124
Closed reports (resolved or superseded):