markdown-table-validator

name	markdown-table-validator
description	Detect and fix Markdown (GFM) tables that won't render on GitHub or the VS Code preview — unescaped pipes inside cells, header/separator column-count mismatch, indented (code-block) tables, and misplaced alignment colons. Use when a markdown table renders as raw text, when cleaning LLM-generated docs in bulk, or when auditing a repo's tables before a commit. TRIGGERS - markdown table broken, table not rendering, fix markdown table, escape pipe in table, GFM table, table renders as text, validate markdown tables.
allowed-tools	Bash, Read, Edit

Markdown Table Validator

Scan Markdown files for the structural problems that silently demote a GFM table to a plain paragraph on GitHub / VS Code preview, and optionally auto-escape the single most common cause (an unescaped | inside a cell).

Self-Evolving Skill: This skill improves through use. If the detector misses a real broken-table case, the --fix heuristic guesses wrong, or a path/flag has drifted — fix this file (and the detector SSoT) immediately, don't defer. Only update for real, reproducible issues.

Why tables break (the one rule that matters)

GFM ignores whitespace between pipes, so alignment is never the cause. What breaks rendering is structure — overwhelmingly an unescaped | inside a cell. GFM's table tokenizer treats a | as a column delimiter even inside a `code span`, so a regex/code cell like `a | b | c` inflates that row's cell count and the whole table collapses. The fix — escaping it as \| — changes meaning, so (Prettier actively corrupts such tables: prettier#10164 / #11410). This skill detects it and can apply the escape under review.