Slinky Link Checker

Validate external links across your repository. Ships as a self-contained GitHub Action (Docker) and a CLI.

Quick start (GitHub Action)

Add a workflow:

name: Slinky
on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]
jobs:
  slinky:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pull-requests: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Run Slinky
        uses: LukeHagar/slinky@v1

Inputs

• path: Root path to scan. Default: .
• patterns: Comma-separated doublestar patterns (e.g. docs/**/*.md,**/*.go). Default: **/*
• concurrency: Max concurrent requests. Default: 16
• timeout: HTTP timeout seconds. Default: 10
• json-out: Optional JSON results path. Default: results.json
• md-out: Optional Markdown report path. Default: results.md
• repo-blob-base: Override GitHub blob base URL (https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/blob/<sha>). Auto-detected in Actions.
• fail-on-failures: Fail job on any broken links. Default: true
• comment-pr: Post Markdown as a PR comment when applicable. Default: true
• step-summary: Append report to the job summary. Default: true

Output links in PRs

When running on PRs, Slinky auto-links files using the PR head commit. You can override with repo-blob-base.

CLI

Install (from source):

go build -o slinky ./

Usage:

# Headless: provide one or more targets (files, dirs, or globs)
slinky check **/*
slinky check ./docs/**/* ./markdown/**/*

# TUI mode: same targets
slinky run **/*

Notes:

• Targets can be files, directories, or doublestar globs. Multiple targets are allowed.
• If no targets are provided, the default is **/* relative to the current working directory.
• Legacy flags --glob and --patterns are still supported, but positional targets are preferred.

Notes

• Respects .gitignore.
• Skips likely binary files and files > 2 MiB.
• Uses a browser-like User-Agent to reduce false negatives.

.slinkignore

Place a .slinkignore file at the repository root to exclude paths and/or specific URLs from scanning and reporting. The format is JSON with two optional arrays:

{
  "ignorePaths": [
    "**/vendor/**",
    "**/*.bak"
  ],
  "ignoreURLs": [
    "https://example.com/this/path/does/not/exist",
    "*localhost:*",
    "*internal.example.com*"
  ]
}

• ignorePaths: gitignore-style patterns evaluated against repository-relative paths (uses doublestar **).
• ignoreURLs: patterns applied to the full URL string. Supports exact matches, substring contains, and doublestar-style wildcard matches.

Examples:

• Ignore generated folders: "**/dist/**", backups: "**/*.bak".
• Ignore known example or placeholder links: "*example.com*", "https://example.com/foo".