Check rules

checkGraph runs every rule against the graph and returns violations at two severities. Structural violations are internally broken declarations, and they fail pagegraph check with exit 1. Editorial violations are quality smells, and they are reported without failing.

Graph rules

These rules run on the declared graph with pagegraph check.

Rule	Severity	Flags
path-owner-collision	structural	A canonical path owned by multiple sources
canonical-path-collision	structural	Paths that collide after lowercasing and trailing-slash removal
self-edge	structural	An edge from a page to itself
duplicate-edge	structural	The same typed edge declared twice
dead-edge	structural	A related or redirect edge whose target is not a node in the graph
instance-missing-title	structural	A collection instance without a title
sitemap-noindex-contradiction	structural	A page that is both in the sitemap and noindex
robots-not-lowercase	structural	A robots value that is not lowercase; the sitemap projection matches noindex literally
related-target-missing-link	structural	A related target route with no link card; collection instances are exempt
redirect-in-sitemap	structural	A redirect that appears in the sitemap
invalid-date	structural	A publishedAt or modifiedAt that is not ISO 8601
inbound-link-coverage	structural	A page below its minInbound count of incoming related edges
coverage-rule-unmatched	structural	A coverage rule that matches no sitemap-eligible page
missing-og-image	structural	A sitemap-eligible page without a resolved image; severity follows the ogImage policy
invalid-og-image	structural	An image URL that is not HTTP(S) or a local path; severity follows the ogImage policy
missing-og-image-file	structural	A same-origin image with no file under public/; severity follows the ogImage policy
robots-blocks-sitemap-url	structural	A published URL the rendered robots.txt disallows for User-agent: *
duplicate-title	editorial	A title shared by several pages
duplicate-description	editorial	A description shared by several pages
description-length	editorial	A description over 160 or under 50 characters
stale-page	editorial	A sitemap-eligible page older than the freshness policy

Dates (publishedAt, modifiedAt, a route's modifiedAt) become the sitemap's <lastmod>, so invalid-date rejects any other form than ISO 8601. Use 2026-09-29, or a date-time with an offset.

missing-og-image

Fails sitemap-eligible pages without a resolved image. Same-origin images must name files under the app's public/ directory, including absolute URLs resolved from local paths. External URLs are not fetched. Set ogImage.severity to "editorial" to warn, or "off" to skip all three image checks. See Add per-page Open Graph images.

robots-blocks-sitemap-url

pagegraph check runs the rendered robots.txt through RFC 9309 matching (longest match, Allow wins ties, * and $). It reports every sitemap page, /sitemap.xml, and /llms.txt when the graph declares it, if a Disallow blocks the URL for User-agent: *.

stale-page

Only sitemap-eligible pages are judged. A page without a date is reported as undated rather than stale. Set freshness: { maxAgeDays } in pagegraph.config.ts, and list the queue with pagegraph stale.

Rendered-content rules

These rules run with pagegraph check --site <url> on the server-rendered HTML.

Rule	Severity	Fails when
rendered-page-unavailable	structural	The page errors, is not HTML, is truncated, or redirects off its declared path
rendered-robots-mismatch	structural	An indexable page renders a noindex robots meta, or a noindex declaration renders none
rendered-canonical-mismatch	structural	The canonical is missing or its path is not the declared path
missing-h1, multiple-h1, empty-h1	structural	The page does not have exactly one H1 with text
faq-not-visible	structural	A FAQPage question or answer is not in the rendered text
offer-price-not-visible	structural	An Offer or AggregateOffer price does not appear on the page
heading-level-skip	editorial	The main-content outline skips a level (h2 → h4)
h1-title-mismatch	editorial	The H1 and <title> share no significant term
webpage-head-mismatch	editorial	A WebPage name or description disagrees with the head
thin-content	editorial	Main content is under the page's content.minWords floor
content-rule-unmatched	structural	A content.minWords rule matches no sitemap-eligible page

pagegraph audit runs the heading and structured-data rules on every audited HTML page too. The robots, canonical and word-count rules need the declared graph, so they stay in check.