SEO Regression Validator

Use this skill after technical SEO/schema guidance exists, before claiming a site or skill output is done.

Read references/regression-checklist.md before running a broad audit.

Owns

• live HTML and local fixture checks;
• pass/fail severity model;
• timestamped evidence reports;
• schema/head metadata checks;
• public artifact reachability checks;
• regression report templates;
• negative tests for missing JSON-LD, duplicate canonical, missing image, and fake reports.

Does Not Own

• implementing SEO fixes;
• Search Console credentialed data;
• analytics exports;
• external authority placement;
• mutating target websites.

Workflow

1. Define target URLs or fixture files.
2. Record timestamp, target, method, and user agent.
3. Fetch or read the target without mutation.
4. Run deterministic checks using scripts/audit_static_seo.py when HTML is available.
5. Separate critical failures, warnings, and skipped checks.
6. Record skipped checks instead of treating them as passes.
7. Produce or update seo-regression-report.json and a human-readable validation summary.
8. Route implementation fixes to the appropriate specialist.

Critical By Default

• missing <title>;
• missing meta description;
• missing or duplicate canonical;
• no JSON-LD on pages expected to have schema;
• invalid JSON-LD;
• NewsArticle without usable image;
• public page blocked or unreachable during live check;
• report claims success without fetching or reading target.

Warning By Default

• missing hreflang when a multilingual equivalent is expected;
• missing OG/Twitter social tags;
• missing RSS autodiscovery;
• missing viewport;
• article meta tags missing when an article schema exists;
• no visible breadcrumb when BreadcrumbList is expected;
• performance metrics not measured.

Safety And Privacy Boundaries

• Do not mutate target sites.
• Do not use credentials unless the user explicitly provides them for this task.
• Do not store cookies, tokens, raw private analytics, raw IP logs, or private Search Console rows in reports.
• Do not claim ranking, indexing, citation, or crawler behavior from one HTML check.

Validation

Validate skill edits with:

python3 $CODEX_HOME/skills/senior-skill-architect/scripts/lint_production_skill.py $HOME/SKILL/skills/seo-regression-validator
python3 $HOME/SKILL/skills/seo-regression-validator/scripts/audit_static_seo.py $HOME/SKILL/skills/seo-regression-validator/fixtures/good-news.html
python3 $HOME/SKILL/plans/seo-llm-skill-cluster/scripts/lint_skill_cluster.py $HOME/SKILL

Forward tests live in evals.json.

Output Shape

Return:

1. Targets checked.
2. Critical findings.
3. Warnings.
4. Skipped checks.
5. Evidence paths or URLs.
6. Implementation owner for each fix.