Redirect & Routing Stabilization PRD

Context

The production site needs to preserve SEO continuity across legacy URLs while reducing runtime usage and build risk.

Goals

  • keep legacy URLs resolving to canonical routes
  • stay on a safe static-export path where possible
  • prevent malformed redirect artifacts from shipping
  • reduce redirect volume over time by improving canonical link emission

Phases

Phase 1 — Redirect pipeline hardening

Completed:

  • fixed the redirect generator corruption bug
  • added redirect validation before writing _redirects
  • kept warning visibility for rule-count growth

Phase 2 — Legacy URL normalization

Implemented:

  • normalized .html legacy URLs
  • normalized wrong-prefix numeric pattern URLs to canonical /patterns/...
  • pending verification through regenerated artifacts

Phase 3 — Canonical link emission

Pending:

  • stop emitting raw Notion page IDs where canonical slugs are known
  • reduce long-term redirect growth

Phase 4 — Deploy workflow optimization

Pending:

  • split heavy indexing from regular deploy paths
  • favor prebuilt artifacts during constrained build windows

Success Criteria

  • no malformed lines in public/_redirects
  • known legacy variants redirect correctly
  • redirect generation remains deterministic and fails fast when invalid