MetaCheck Pro: When Basic Validation Wasn't Enough
The XML Metadata Validator handles structure. MetaCheck Pro handles content. They're siblings, each solving a different layer of the same problem.
After building the XML Metadata Validator, I thought I was done with XML validation. Then users started asking: "Can it also check if the content inside the tags makes sense?" Not just structure — content logic.
MetaCheck Pro was born from that question. It goes deeper than format validation. It checks cross-field consistency: if the document says it's in English but contains text that's clearly not English, it flags that. If a chapter says it has 10 sections but only 8 are present, it catches that. If the same ID appears twice in a document that requires unique IDs — flagged.
The hardest part was building the rule engine without making it require programming knowledge. I wanted non-technical users — editors, content managers, project leads — to be able to define their own rules in plain language.
That took three separate rewrites of the rule parser. Version 3 finally got it right: natural-language rules that compile down to efficient checks under the hood. "All chapter IDs must be unique" is a rule a human can write. The system figures out how to enforce it.