The dead-link pruning engine proactively validates citations in AI-written drafts by scanning Markdown links and issuing lightweight, streaming range requests (bytes=0-0) through an SSRF-safe network guard. Non-responsive or 4xx/5xx third-party citations are stripped by unwrapping their anchor text back to plain prose to maintain narrative flow without tearing holes in the article. Throughout this cleanup process, the engine strictly preserves the target money link, ensuring client placements remain intact for adversarial review while flagging any broken destination URLs for operator inspection.