Linkguard: catch dead links and swap in archived copies

Description and use

Linkguard automatically detects dead outbound links in static blogs, suggests archived copies, and can generate a pull request to replace them.

Problem

Blog posts accumulate dead outbound links over time, breaking reader experience.

Outcome

Linkguard automatically detects dead outbound links, provides archived alternatives, and can generate a pull request to update the content, improving site reliability without manual effort.

Workflow

• Add Linkguard GitHub Action to workflow
• Action scans markdown/HTML for outbound links
• Each link is classified as ok, moved, dead, or blocked
• For dead links, Wayback Machine snapshot is queried
• Results are reported in job summary, annotations, JSON, and markdown
• If open-pr:true, PR is opened replacing dead links with archived URLs

Evidence

Drop it into a weekly workflow and Linkguard walks your content, pulls every outbound link out of the markdown and HTML (skipping code blocks, comments, relative links, and private addresses), and checks each one.

Source

For each link it also asks the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for a snapshot. When a dead link has a good one, the report hands you the archived URL.

Source

Set open-pr: true and Linkguard opens a pull request that replaces each dead link with its web.archive.org copy, exactly where it appears and nowhere else.

Source