A comprehensive link validation tool that identifies broken URLs in websites, local markdown files, and HTML documents.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install dead-link-scanner
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install dead-link-scanner using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Dead Link Scanner?
The Dead Link Scanner is an essential utility for developers and technical writers who need to ensure the integrity of their web content and documentation. By scanning live websites via recursive crawling or analyzing local files, it identifies 404 errors, connection failures, and other broken references that can harm user experience and SEO. As a key component of the Openclaw Skills ecosystem, it provides a high-performance way to automate link health checks across various digital formats.
This tool is particularly valuable for maintaining large documentation repositories or auditing complex site structures before deployment. It supports multiple output formats, including detailed JSON, making it easy to integrate into existing developer workflows and automated testing suites.
Dead Link Scanner Use Cases
- Validating internal and external links in project README.md and documentation files.
- Crawling a live website to detect 404 errors across multiple levels of page depth.
- Pre-deployment audits to ensure no dead links are introduced in a production environment.
- Monitoring third-party link health in blog posts or resource pages.
How Dead Link Scanner Works
- The user specifies a target source, which can be a URL for web crawling or a file path for local markdown/HTML analysis.
- The scanner extracts all hyperlinks using regex and DOM parsing techniques.
- For web targets, the tool recursively visits pages up to a user-defined depth to find nested links.
- Each link is asynchronously pinged to verify its HTTP status code and connectivity.
- The tool aggregates the results, highlighting status codes like 404 or connection errors, and presents a summary of the scan.
Dead Link Scanner Setup
To use this tool from the Openclaw Skills library, ensure you have Python 3 available on your system. Run the script directly using the following commands:
# Scan a website with a specific depth
python3 scripts/dead_link_scanner.py scan https://example.com --depth 2
# Scan local markdown files in a directory
python3 scripts/dead_link_scanner.py file docs/*.md
Dead Link Scanner Data Schema & Taxonomy
The scanner provides a structured report of the link health. The output includes:
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Status | The HTTP status code (e.g., 200, 404) or 'ERR' for network issues |
| URL | The destination link being verified |
| Source | The file or page where the link was found |
| Error Detail | Specific error messages for connection failures (e.g., Timeout, ConnectionError) |
| Summary | A final count of total links checked, OK links, and broken links |
Dead Link Scanner Advanced Features
- Recursive crawling with configurable depth and maximum URL limits.
- Support for rate limiting via the delay parameter to avoid triggering server security blocks.
- JSON output mode for seamless integration with other developer tools and Openclaw Skills automations.
- Internal-only scanning mode to focus strictly on domain-specific link structures.
- Customizable request timeouts to handle slow-responding external servers.
SKILL.md
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