FEATURE: Inline Links and Images

Field	Value
Version	20260812 V1
Description	Defines inline links, reference links, images, destinations, titles, and reference resolution.
Depends On	ARCHITECTURE.md, FEATURE-BLOCK-LEAF.md, FEATURE-INLINE-EMPHASIS.md
Provides	link parser, image parser, reference resolver
Consumes	block parser, inline parser

Purpose

The inline parser recognizes inline, full-reference, collapsed-reference, and shortcut links and images. It resolves link reference definitions collected during block parsing, supports balanced destinations and titles, and prevents nested links while permitting nested image descriptions.

Behavior

Inline destinations may be empty, angle-bracket delimited, escaped, or contain balanced parentheses.
Titles may use single quotes, double quotes, or parentheses.
Reference labels are normalized with Unicode case folding and whitespace normalization.
The first matching reference definition wins.
Link text is parsed as inline content.
Image descriptions produce plain-text alt content.
Links cannot contain links; image descriptions may contain links.

Programmatic Acceptance

=== AC inline-links-suite ===
Intent: The inline link, reference link, and image syntax passes its complete owned conformance scope.
Suite: scoped
Requires: executable=python3; scope=test

import subprocess import sys

result = subprocess.run( [sys.executable, "spec_tests.py", "--spec", "spec.txt", "--program", "./commonmark", "--pattern", "^(Links|Images)$"], capture_output=True, text=True, ) print(result.stdout) print(result.stderr, file=sys.stderr) assert result.returncode == 0 === END AC inline-links-suite ===

=== AC inline-links-boundaries ===
Intent: The implementation preserves link and image destination, title, reference, and nesting behavior.
Suite: scoped
Requires: executable=python3; scope=test

import subprocess import sys

result = subprocess.run( [sys.executable, "spec_tests.py", "--spec", "spec.txt", "--program", "./commonmark", "--pattern", "^(Links|Images)$"], capture_output=True, text=True, ) assert result.returncode == 0 === END AC inline-links-boundaries ===

User Acceptance

None.

Guardrails

The implementation does not use a public Markdown implementation.
Reference definitions are resolved globally while preserving first-definition precedence.