# JOB-001: Ensure Documentation Links Remain Valid

**Version**: 1.0
**Created**: 2025-10-25
**Status**: Active

## Context

Technical documentation and specification files use hyperlinks extensively to:
- Reference external resources (APIs, libraries, standards)
- Link between internal documents and sections
- Create navigation paths through complex information
- Cite sources and additional reading

Over time, these links can break due to:
- External websites changing URLs or going offline
- Internal files being moved, renamed, or deleted
- Heading anchors being modified without updating references
- Typos in link paths or malformed URLs

Broken links create frustration, reduce documentation credibility, and waste time as users manually search for moved resources.

## Job Story

**When** I'm maintaining technical documentation with many internal and external links,

**I want to** automatically validate all links are working and correctly formatted,

**So that** users can navigate documentation confidently without encountering broken references that interrupt their workflow.

## Pains

### Current Pain Points

1. **Manual Link Checking is Tedious**: Clicking hundreds of links manually to verify they work is time-consuming and error-prone

2. **Links Break Silently**: Files get moved or external sites change without breaking the build, so broken links go unnoticed until users report them

3. **Refactoring Risk**: Reorganizing documentation structure risks breaking internal links with no automated way to detect issues

4. **External Link Rot**: Third-party resources go offline or move, and there's no systematic way to identify which external references are still valid

5. **CI/CD Blind Spot**: Build pipelines validate code but not documentation links, allowing broken links to reach production

6. **Ambiguous Errors**: When links do break, it's unclear which file contains the broken link, what the target was, and why it failed

## Gains

### Expected Outcomes

1. **Automated Validation**: Links are checked automatically during development and in CI/CD pipelines

2. **Early Detection**: Broken links are caught before they reach users, during the commit or pull request stage

3. **Clear Error Reports**: Validation errors clearly identify the source file, line number, broken link, and failure reason

4. **Safe Refactoring**: Documentation can be reorganized with confidence that link breakage will be immediately detected

5. **External Link Monitoring**: External references are validated periodically to identify link rot before users encounter it

6. **CI Integration**: Documentation quality is enforced the same way code quality is, with failing builds for broken links

7. **Private Link Support**: Internal/private URLs can be configured to skip validation without triggering false errors

8. **Fast Feedback**: Developers get immediate feedback about link issues without manual checking or waiting for user reports
