The link pruner scans markdown drafts using regular expression matching for standard inline and autolink syntax, validates HTTP status via ranged requests, and unwraps them into plain text by splicing in reverse character offset order.
flowchart LR
A["Raw Markdown Draft"] --> B["Scan Links via Regex<br/>(Inline & Autolinks)"]
B --> C["Probe URLs via HTTP"]
C --> D{"Live or Protected?"}
D -- "Yes (2xx/3xx)" --> E["Retain Link Tag"]
D -- "No (4xx/5xx/Dead)" --> F["Extract Anchor Text"]
F --> G["Splice in Reverse Offset Order"]
E --> H["Cleaned Markdown Output"]
G --> H