Claude Documentation Validation Skill

Check whether the local documentation clone at ~/.claude-code-docs/ is healthy and up-to-date.

When to Use This Skill

Activate when the user asks about:

• Documentation freshness or staleness
• Broken links or unreachable docs
• Health checks on their local install
• Whether docs need updating

Validation Workflow

Step 1: Check if the metadata is installed

Verify ~/.claude-code-docs/paths_manifest.json exists. If not:

Documentation not found. Run this in Claude Code to install:

/plugin marketplace add costiash/claude-code-docs
/plugin install claude-docs@claude-code-docs

Step 2: Check freshness

Two signals — when the manifest was last generated (server-side), and when the clone last pulled:

jq -r '.generated_at' ~/.claude-code-docs/paths_manifest.json          # manifest build time
cd ~/.claude-code-docs && git log -1 --format="%ci %s"                  # clone last updated

If the manifest is older than ~24h, the SessionStart hook normally refreshes it on the next session; a manual refresh is cd ~/.claude-code-docs && git fetch origin main && git reset --hard origin/main.

Step 3: Check the cache status

~/.claude-code-docs/plugin/scripts/fetch-docs.sh status

Reports manifest pages / cached / pending / stale. If pending > 0, suggest /docs sync.

Step 4: Run URL validation (if user asks for it)

Quick spot-check (recommended first), or full scan (1-2 min):

bash ~/.claude-code-docs/plugin/skills/claude-docs-validate/scripts/validate-paths.sh --quick
bash ~/.claude-code-docs/plugin/skills/claude-docs-validate/scripts/validate-paths.sh

These read URLs directly from the manifest. Report the summary (reachable / broken / timed out). For persistent broken URLs, the upstream page may have moved — report at https://github.com/costiash/claude-code-docs/issues.

Step 5: Doc statistics (if user asks for stats/count)

jq '.pages | length' ~/.claude-code-docs/paths_manifest.json                       # total
jq -r '.pages[].category' ~/.claude-code-docs/paths_manifest.json | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn  # by category

Troubleshooting

Issue	Solution
"Documentation not found"	Plugin not installed or docs not cloned. Re-run /plugin install claude-docs@claude-code-docs
Many broken URLs	Likely a sitemap change. Run git pull first, then re-validate
Timeout errors	Network issue or Anthropic site is slow. Try again later
"Permission denied"	Check that ~/.claude-code-docs/ is readable

Reference Files

• examples/validate-docs.md — Example validation workflow