---
title: Has meta description (>= 50 chars)
description: "The meta description is what agents use as the page summary when they need a quick representation that's smaller than the full body. A short or missing description means agents either fall back to scraping the body or skip the page entirely in summary lists."
doc_version: 0.2.0
last_updated: "2026-04-24T21:30:56.217Z"
---

## How the check decides

The check reads the `content` attribute of `<meta name="description">`, trims whitespace, and asserts the length is at least 50 characters. Fails if the tag is missing or its trimmed content is shorter.

## How to implement it

Author a one- or two-sentence description for every page. 50 characters is a low floor; 120–160 is closer to the real sweet spot for both agents and search engines.

### Pass

```html
<meta name="description"
      content="Install a14y in under a minute and audit your first documentation site against scorecard v0.2.0.">
```

### Fail

```html
<meta name="description" content="Install page">
```

## Sitemap

Full docs site index: [/sitemap.md](/sitemap.md).