version: "1.0.0" name: dart-doc-validation description: |- Best practices for validating Dart documentation comments. Covers using dart doc to catch unresolved references and macros. license: Apache-2.0 key_features:

• Documentation comment validation
• Unresolved reference checking
• Dart doc macro verification

Dart Doc Validation

1. When to use this skill

Use this skill when:

• Writing or updating documentation comments (///) in Dart code.
• Checking for broken documentation links, references, or macros.
• Preparing a package for publishing to pub.dev.

When NOT to use (Abstention Guardrails)

Do NOT apply this skill or refactor doc comments when:

• Illustrative Pseudo-Code & Non-Dart Code Fences: Comments contain

pseudo-code, non-Dart language identifiers (e.g. `yaml, `json, ```bash, ```text), or abstract conceptual fragments intentionally not designed to compile as valid Dart.

• Generated Code: Files generated by tools (e.g. *.g.dart, *.mocks.dart,

*.freezed.dart) where comments are synthesized.

• External Markdown Hyperlinks: Text in square brackets followed by a link

target (e.g. [External Guide](https://...)), which is standard Markdown hyperlink syntax rather than an unresolved Dart doc reference.

Discovery

To find documentation issues:

Missing Lint

Verify if the comment_references lint is enabled:

• Target: analysis_options.yaml
• Search Query: comment_references

Automated Validation

Run the documentation generator to surface warnings:

• Command: dart doc -o $(mktemp -d)
• Keywords to look for: warning:, unresolved doc reference,

undefined macro

2. Best Practices

Enable the doc validation lint

In your analysis_options.yaml, enable the comment_references lint.

linter:
  rules:
    - comment_references

Validating Documentation Locally

Use the dart doc command with a temporary output directory to validate documentation comments without polluting the local project workspace.

This command parses all documentation comments and reports warnings such as:

• warning: unresolved doc reference
• warning: undefined macro

Command to run:

dart doc -o $(mktemp -d)

_This will work on Mac and Linux._

This ensures that the generated HTML files are stored in a temporary location and don't clutter the package directory, while still surfacing all validation warnings in the terminal output.

Browsing the docs:

Our docs use features designed to be run on a web server. If you want to browse the generated docs locally, install the dhttpd package.

dart install dhttpd
TMP_DIR=$(mktemp -d) && dart doc -o "$TMP_DIR" &&  dhttpd --path "$TMP_DIR"

_(Or use another HTTP server, such as python3 -m http.server.)_

Fixing Common Warnings

• Unresolved doc reference: Ensure that any identifier wrapped in square

brackets ([Identifier]) correctly points to an existing class, method, property, or parameter in the current scope or imported libraries.

• Undefined macro: If using {@macro macro_name}, ensure that the template

{@template macro_name} is defined in the same file or a file that is imported and visible to the documentation generator.