authordb-reachable (TN103)

Group	Default severity
Metadata	Warning

The linter verifies each author’s internal_id against the Rubin author database through the Ook API. When that service cannot be reached, the ID cannot be verified either way, so the linter reports this warning instead of guessing.

This rule fires only for transport failures: a connection error, a timeout, or an HTTP error status other than 404. (A 404 means the database was reached and does not know the ID — that is TN102 — and a malformed record for a known ID is also reported as TN102.)

Example

Running the linter without network access, or while the service is down:

[TN103] Could not reach the author database to verify internal_id 'sickj' for author Jonathan Sick.

Because this is a warning, the command still exits 0 (unless you pass --strict): an outage should not fail a technote whose metadata may be perfectly fine.

How to fix it

There is usually nothing to change in the technote:

• If you are offline, re-run when you have network access.

• If the service is down, re-run later; in CI, re-run the job.

• If the failure persists while other network access works, report it in the #square-docs-support Slack channel.

See also

• TN102 — the database was reached but does not know the ID.