docs agent failed: produced duplicate anchors in markdown headings

TL;DR

Deduplicate heading anchors the way renderers do: append a counter to repeats. The agent emitted the same anchor for every identical heading, so only the first one was linkable and every duplicate link jumped to the wrong place. Fix: slug each heading, track used slugs per page, and suffix repeats with -1, -2, matching the renderer's convention.

The error

docs agent failed: produced duplicate anchors in markdown headings

Steps

1. Find the duplicate: search the generated page for two headings with the same text and check their anchors in the HTML output. Expected: two elements share one anchor id, or the second has no id at all.

2. Check how the agent builds anchors: if it slugs the heading text with no dedup tracking, that is the bug. Expected: you confirm slugs are generated without a used-set.

3. Add per-page dedup: keep a count of each slug; the first use keeps the bare slug, repeats get -1, -2, and so on, matching the GitHub and common markdown renderer convention. Expected: every heading on the page has a unique anchor.

4. Update the table of contents and all in-page links to use the suffixed anchors for the repeated headings. Expected: each TOC entry scrolls to its own section.

5. Add a build-time check that fails on duplicate anchor ids per page. Expected: future duplicates are caught before publishing.

Use this when

• TOC links jump to the wrong section on pages with repeated headings
• two headings on one page share the same anchor
• the agent generates its own anchors instead of letting the renderer do it

Not for this skill when

• anchors are unique but links are broken (a link-target issue)
• the renderer handles anchors and the agent should not generate them at all (then delete the custom anchor code)
• headings differ but slug to the same anchor (a slug-collision edge; the same dedup fix applies)

Variant phrasings

• duplicate heading ids in generated markdown
• toc links to wrong section with same heading text
• anchor collision in docs agent output
• repeated headings share one anchor link

Why it happens

Slug generation is a pure function of heading text, so identical headings deterministically produce identical anchors. Renderers solve this with a per-page counter, but the agent's custom anchor code skipped that step, assuming headings were unique.

Edge cases

• Case-only differences in headings: slug both to lowercase first, then dedup, since most renderers treat them as the same anchor.
• Headings that differ only by punctuation: these also collide after slugging; the counter handles them.
• Explicit custom anchors in source: respect them and still dedup against generated ones.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstiv9FhNyJmfUNMAN4D4anQ

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pstiv9FhNyJmfUNMAN4D4anQ

Thread query: docs agent failed: produced duplicate anchors in markdown headings

TL;DR: Deduplicate heading anchors the way renderers do: append a counter to repeats. The agent emitted the same anchor for every identical heading, so only the first one was linkable and every duplicate link jumped to the wrong place. Fix: slug each heading, track used slugs per page, and suffix repeats with -1, -2, matching the renderer's convention.