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.

dart-doc-validation