Findings

Eight checks. Each says what is wrong and what to do about it, because “orphaned entry” on its own is a shrug.

Errors

Relations into the trash — brokenTargets

An element points at something that has been deleted. The relation survives until the trash is emptied, and then it is gone for good.

Restore the element, or clear the field. This is the one finding that is never a false positive.

References that resolve to nothing — unresolvedReferences

A reference tag such as {entry:412:url} whose element does not exist. Craft renders an unresolvable reference tag as the tag itself, braces and all, in the middle of the page.

Yarn only reports tags it actually tried to resolve — ones naming an element by id or by UID. A tag that names something by slug or handle, including another plugin’s own reference grammar, is skipped rather than called broken.

Links in the same check are notices, not errors: an internal link Yarn could not tie to an element is often a routed template or a file outside the volumes.

Warnings

Relations to elements missing from this site — absentTargets

The target has no content in the site being mapped, so the relation renders as nothing here. Usually a section or volume that was never propagated to this site.

Live elements pointing at things that are not — disabledTargets

A live page relating to something disabled, pending or expired. The front end renders a gap unless the template checks.

When both ends are off, this drops to a notice — nothing is rendering wrongly, but it is worth knowing when either one is switched back on.

Circular relations — cycles

A points at B points back at A, at any length. Harmless until a template follows relations recursively, at which point it is an infinite loop.

Reported once per cycle regardless of where you enter it, and capped by the cycleLimit setting.

Elements related to themselves — selfReferences

Same problem, shortest possible loop. Almost always a mis-click in a relation field.

Notices

Nothing points at these — orphans

No element on the site relates to it.

An element that has a URL of its own is still reachable from search and from the sitemap, and the finding says so. One that has no URL and nothing relating to it has no route from the front end at all — that is the interesting case, and orphansIgnoreRoutable filters down to it.

Which kinds are reported is the orphanKinds setting.

Unused assets — unusedAssets

Nothing reaches this asset. Reported separately from orphans, because it is the check most people install a relations plugin for — and the one that most needs its caveat read.

Yarn can only see what it scans. An asset referenced from a template, from a CSS background, or from a source that is switched off is invisible to it and appears here. Check before deleting four hundred files.

In the console

php craft yarn/findings --only=brokenTargets
php craft yarn/findings --fail-on=warning

Exit code is 0 unless --fail-on is set and something at or above that severity was found.

Adding your own

DefineFindingsEvent fires after every built-in check, with the findings they produced. Add your own, or drop the ones your site has decided it does not care about — a site that deliberately keeps a library of unused stock imagery does not want to be told about it every month. See extending.md.