agentspeed.
Rubric / Readability

Declared language matches the content

coherence.language_declared_matches_content
weight 1heuristicemerging

<html lang> matches the language the visible content is actually written in, per a conservative deterministic language profile. The classic failure is a template default nobody edited: a German shop declaring lang="en". A mismatch WARNs, never fails - the detector is probabilistic and stays silent when unsure.

Adoption of what this check tests is still climbing, so failing it is an opportunity rather than a defect. Remediation lists rank these after established fixes, and the weight moves only when measurement earns it.

Definition
Check ID
coherence.language_declared_matches_content
Category
Readability
Weight
1
Counts toward the score
Yes.
Evaluated by
A fixed rule whose threshold AgentSpeed chose. Reproducible; another rubric may reasonably disagree.
Chosen parameter
detector = stopword/script profile, >=40 words, WARN-only
Standard maturity
emerging
Canonical spec
None. This check has no published external specification — it is an AgentSpeed rule.
Introduced in
r2026.09.0
Retired in
Still active.
History
Every change to the instrument— including the versions that changed this check
Machine-readable
/rubric.json— this check, and every other, as data
How often this check is right

No rate published. Too few labelled cases to publish a rate: 1 flagged case (30 needed to publish), 1 defective case (30 needed to publish). The counts are the honest answer here. The matrix behind coherence.language_declared_matches_content is 2 labelled cases — reported here rather than turned into a percentage that would read as more certain than the evidence is.

Corpus v1, measured under rubric r2026.11.0. Full method and every other check at /rubric/accuracy.

How to fix it
Set `<html lang>` to the language the page is actually written in. Agents pick tokenizers, target markets, and which variant to quote from this attribute; a wrong declaration routes the wrong readers to the page.
Does your site pass this check?

Free scan, 30 seconds, no signup — this check and the other 35, with the exact evidence for each verdict.

Scan my site →
Declared language matches the content · coherence.language_declared_matches_content · AgentSpeed