Standalone guides

Specification for how compile and each check treat a standalone guide. standaloneGuides[] registers the file, and the coverage scan then treats it as accounted for.

Standalone guide behavior

A standalone guide is register-only:

• Compile doesn’t write output for it. A guide still stitches it like any shard when the guide’s manifest or compile.scopeRoot walk reaches it.
• Its headings stay out of the refs registry unless a guide stitches it into a compiled output.
• Its outbound links are validated: .md and source-file targets must resolve on disk, and same-file #fragment anchors must match a heading. See built-in link validation.
• merlon prose and merlon check run Vale over it, and a .vale.ini section opts one file out, as Opt a standalone guide out of Vale shows.
• The markdownlint passes in merlon lint and merlon check lint it only when a shard lint path reaches it or the compiled config’s globs list it. In-scope guide fileset lists the paths each pass reads.
• merlon fix runs prettier --write . from --docs-root, so it formats a standalone guide only when the file is under the docs root.

standaloneGuides[] accepts file paths or globs, such as packages/*/README.md, resolved from the scan root. It is also the canonical inventory of intentionally isolated files.

A standaloneGuides[] glob can match any file under the scan root, even a path that the scan skips: **/README.md also matches the READMEs under node_modules. Link validation and Vale read every match, as does the path probe when lint.paths is on. Keep the globs narrow. This rule is advisory, since merlon check reads every match, stray or intended. Whoever edits the config applies it, and the globs in the config diff are its evidence.