@@ -539,13 +539,15 @@ The slug generation function is selected with the `myst_heading_slug_func` optio
 The recommended form is a named preset:
 
 ```python
-myst_heading_slug_func = "github"  # the default; also available: "gitlab"
+myst_heading_slug_func = "github"  # the default; also available: "gitlab", "docutils"
 ```
 
 The `"gitlab"` preset follows [GitLab's algorithm](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/markdown.html#heading-ids-and-links) (which, unlike GitHub, strips surrounding whitespace, squeezes repeated hyphens and prefixes digit-only slugs with `anchor-`).
 
+The `"docutils"` preset produces slugs byte-compatible with `docutils.nodes.make_id` — the `id` style reStructuredText headings receive — for a uniform anchor style across mixed rST + Markdown projects; its slugs are ASCII-only, so a non-Latin title produces no anchor (see the anchor contract below).
+
 :::{versionchanged} 5.2.0
-`myst_heading_slug_func` now accepts the preset names `"github"` (default) and `"gitlab"`.
+`myst_heading_slug_func` now accepts the preset names `"github"` (default), `"gitlab"` and `"docutils"`.
 
 As a legacy form, it can still be set to an import path string
 (e.g. `myst_heading_slug_func = "mypackage.mymodule.slugify"`, added in 0.19.0)
@@ -574,6 +576,41 @@ $ myst-anchors -l 2 --slug-func github docs/syntax/optional.md
 <h2 id="direct-latex-math"></h2>
 ```
 
+Note this is a quick preview using the underlying markdown-it plugin:
+it does not apply the renderer-only empty-slug rule described below,
+so a heading whose slug is empty is shown with a literal empty (or suffixed) id,
+where the renderer would emit no anchor at all.
+
+### The anchor contract
+
+:::{versionadded} 5.2.0
+:::
+
+- **Slug generation**: anchors are computed by the configured slug function.
+  The named presets are specified by `myst_parser/slugs.py` (pure and
+  standard-library-only, so alternative implementations can port them from that
+  one file) and pinned by the machine-readable corpus `tests/fixtures/slugs.json`
+  (versioned via a `version` field; append-only within a version, with a version
+  bump on any semantic change).
+- **Deduplication**: repeated slugs are given fixed-base suffixes `slug`,
+  `slug-1`, `slug-2`, ... by `unique_slug` — the base is never mutated. This
+  applies whatever the preset; in particular docutils' own duplicate-id scheme is
+  *not* emulated by the `docutils` preset, which governs the slug text only.
+- **Empty slugs**: a slug function may return an empty string (a punctuation-only
+  title, or any non-Latin title under `docutils`); such a heading gets no anchor
+  and takes no part in deduplication.
+- **Explicit-id priority**: an explicit target/id on a heading beats the
+  auto-slug as the primary id; the superseded slug is kept as a secondary anchor,
+  so previously published links keep working.
+- **HTML id emission**: slugs are emitted as real (secondary) HTML `id`s in the
+  output, so the anchors exist in the published HTML. The docutils `id_prefix`
+  setting is deliberately bypassed — the raw slug is the anchor. Set
+  `myst_heading_anchors_html_ids = False` to disable this.
+- **docutils drift policy**: the `docutils` preset is pinned byte-for-byte
+  against `docutils.nodes.make_id` by CI. If a future docutils changes `make_id`,
+  the preset and corpus stay byte-stable (they are the contract) and the
+  divergence will be documented.
+
 (syntax/definition-lists)=
 
 ## Definition Lists
 
@@ -313,7 +313,7 @@ def __repr__(self) -> str:
             "validator": check_heading_slug_func,
             "help": (
                 "Function for creating heading anchors: "
-                'a preset name ("github", "gitlab"), '
+                'a preset name ("docutils", "github", "gitlab"), '
                 "or (legacy) a python import path "
                 "e.g. `my_package.my_module.my_function`"
             ),
 
@@ -877,6 +877,12 @@ def generate_heading_target(
                 append_to=self.current_node,
             )
         else:
+            if not slug:
+                # an empty slug (e.g. a punctuation-only title, or a
+                # non-Latin title under the docutils preset) means the
+                # heading gets no anchor; it also takes no part in
+                # deduplication, so a later empty slug is not suffixed -1
+                return
             node["slug"] = slug
             # note: the slug is additionally emitted as a (secondary) HTML id
             # by the `AddSlugIds` transform, which runs only after *all*
 
@@ -3,15 +3,20 @@
 This is the single source of truth for heading slugs,
 shared by the renderer (``myst_heading_anchors``) and the ``myst-anchors`` CLI.
 
-The functions here are pure and dependency-free (standard library ``re`` only),
+The functions here are pure and dependency-free (standard library only),
 so that alternative implementations of MyST can replicate them from this file;
 for the same reason, the unit-test corpus is kept as a language-agnostic
 data file (``tests/fixtures/slugs.json``).
+
+A slug function may return an empty string (e.g. for a punctuation-only
+title, or a non-Latin title under the ``docutils`` preset); an empty slug
+means the heading gets *no* anchor.
 """
 
 from __future__ import annotations
 
 import re
+import unicodedata
 from collections.abc import Callable, Container
 
 _GITHUB_CLEAN = re.compile(r"[^\w\u4e00-\u9fff\- ]")
@@ -57,7 +62,82 @@ def gitlab_slugify(title: str) -> str:
     return slug
 
 
+# ported verbatim from ``docutils.nodes`` (public domain), so that this
+# module stays free of third-party imports; byte-fidelity to
+# ``docutils.nodes.make_id`` is pinned by tests/test_slugs.py
+_DOCUTILS_DIGRAPHS = {
+    0x00DF: "sz",  # ß
+    0x00E6: "ae",  # æ
+    0x0153: "oe",  # œ
+    0x0238: "db",  # ȸ
+    0x0239: "qp",  # ȹ
+}
+_DOCUTILS_TRANSLATE = {
+    0x00F8: "o",  # ø
+    0x0111: "d",  # đ
+    0x0127: "h",  # ħ
+    0x0131: "i",  # dotless i
+    0x0142: "l",  # ł
+    0x0167: "t",  # ŧ
+    0x0180: "b",  # ƀ
+    0x0183: "b",  # ƃ
+    0x0188: "c",  # ƈ
+    0x018C: "d",  # ƌ
+    0x0192: "f",  # ƒ
+    0x0199: "k",  # ƙ
+    0x019A: "l",  # ƚ
+    0x019E: "n",  # ƞ
+    0x01A5: "p",  # ƥ
+    0x01AB: "t",  # ƫ
+    0x01AD: "t",  # ƭ
+    0x01B4: "y",  # ƴ
+    0x01B6: "z",  # ƶ
+    0x01E5: "g",  # ǥ
+    0x0225: "z",  # ȥ
+    0x0234: "l",  # ȴ
+    0x0235: "n",  # ȵ
+    0x0236: "t",  # ȶ
+    0x0237: "j",  # ȷ
+    0x023C: "c",  # ȼ
+    0x023F: "s",  # ȿ
+    0x0240: "z",  # ɀ
+    0x0247: "e",  # ɇ
+    0x0249: "j",  # ɉ
+    0x024B: "q",  # ɋ
+    0x024D: "r",  # ɍ
+    0x024F: "y",  # ɏ
+}
+_DOCUTILS_NON_ID = re.compile(r"[^a-z0-9]+")
+_DOCUTILS_AT_ENDS = re.compile(r"^[-0-9]+|-+$")
+
+
+def docutils_slugify(title: str) -> str:
+    """Convert a heading title to a docutils/reStructuredText-style id.
+
+    Byte-identical to ``docutils.nodes.make_id``, for uniform anchors across
+    mixed rST + Markdown projects.  Algorithm: lowercase the title; map the
+    digraph letters ß æ œ ȸ ȹ and 33 further stroked/hooked Latin letters to
+    ASCII equivalents; NFKD-normalize and drop every remaining non-ASCII
+    character; normalize whitespace runs to single spaces (kept for
+    ``make_id`` step-parity, though subsumed by the next step); collapse each
+    run of characters outside ``[a-z0-9]`` to a single hyphen; strip leading
+    digits/hyphens and trailing hyphens.
+
+    The result matches ``[a-z](-?[a-z0-9]+)*`` or is *empty* — the latter for
+    any title with no Latin letters (so such headings get no anchor), and
+    docutils' own duplicate-id handling (``idN``) is not emulated:
+    deduplication is governed by :func:`unique_slug`, whatever the preset.
+    """
+    slug = title.lower()
+    slug = slug.translate(_DOCUTILS_DIGRAPHS)
+    slug = slug.translate(_DOCUTILS_TRANSLATE)
+    slug = unicodedata.normalize("NFKD", slug).encode("ascii", "ignore").decode()
+    slug = _DOCUTILS_NON_ID.sub("-", " ".join(slug.split()))
+    return _DOCUTILS_AT_ENDS.sub("", slug)
+
+
 SLUG_PRESETS: dict[str, Callable[[str], str]] = {
+    "docutils": docutils_slugify,
     "github": github_slugify,
     "gitlab": gitlab_slugify,
 }
 
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 {
+  "version": 1,
+  "description": "Normative conformance corpus for MyST heading-anchor slugs. 'slugify' rows pin SLUG_PRESETS[preset](input) == expected, byte-for-byte; 'unique' rows pin unique_slug(slug, existing) == expected. The set is append-only within a version; any semantic change to an existing vector or algorithm requires a version bump. An empty expected slug means the heading receives no anchor.",
   "slugify": [
     {
       "preset": "github",
@@ -104,6 +106,76 @@
       "preset": "gitlab",
       "input": "!!!",
       "expected": ""
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "Ubuntu 20.04",
+      "expected": "ubuntu-20-04"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "lxc.env for environment variables",
+      "expected": "lxc-env-for-environment-variables"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "2.0",
+      "expected": ""
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "3rd party",
+      "expected": "rd-party"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "Привет Мир",
+      "expected": ""
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "中文标题",
+      "expected": ""
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": " a b c ",
+      "expected": "a-b-c"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "Title with UPPER",
+      "expected": "title-with-upper"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "Hello 🎉 World!",
+      "expected": "hello-world"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "!!!",
+      "expected": ""
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "Straße & Œuvre",
+      "expected": "strasze-oeuvre"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "łódź ȸȹ",
+      "expected": "lodz-dbqp"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "café  naïve",
+      "expected": "cafe-naive"
+    },
+    {
+      "preset": "docutils",
+      "input": "__init__ (API)",
+      "expected": "init-api"
     }
   ],
   "unique": [
 
@@ -34,6 +34,22 @@ def test_print_anchors_gitlab():
     assert re.findall(r'id="([^"]*)"', out) == ["anchor-20"]
 
 
+def test_print_anchors_docutils():
+    """``--slug-func docutils`` applies the make_id-style preset (with dedup)."""
+    out = _run_cli(
+        "# Hello World\n\n# Straße & Œuvre\n\n# Hello World",
+        "-l",
+        "1",
+        "--slug-func",
+        "docutils",
+    )
+    assert re.findall(r'id="([^"]*)"', out) == [
+        "hello-world",
+        "strasze-oeuvre",
+        "hello-world-1",
+    ]
+
+
 # a corpus exercising duplicates, dotted/digit titles, non-latin scripts,
 # inline code, emphasis and internal whitespace
 CROSS_CHECK_CORPUS = """\
@@ -84,3 +100,54 @@ def test_anchor_slugs_match_renderer():
     ]
 
     assert cli_ids == doc_slugs
+
+
+# docutils cross-check corpus: duplicates, dotted/digit titles, digraphs,
+# inline code and internal whitespace, all with *non-empty* docutils slugs.
+# Empty-slug titles (e.g. `# 2.0`, `# 中文标题`) are deliberately excluded:
+# the renderer drops them from deduplication (empty slug -> no anchor), a
+# renderer-only rule that the CLI's anchors plugin does not implement.
+DOCUTILS_CROSS_CHECK_CORPUS = """\
+# Dup
+
+# Dup
+
+# Ubuntu 20.04
+
+# lxc.env for environment variables
+
+# 3rd party
+
+# Straße & Œuvre
+
+# Some `code` here
+
+# Some *emphasis* text
+
+# x  y
+"""
+
+
+def test_anchor_slugs_match_renderer_docutils():
+    """The CLI and the docutils renderer agree under the ``docutils`` preset."""
+    cli_out = _run_cli(
+        DOCUTILS_CROSS_CHECK_CORPUS, "-l", "6", "--slug-func", "docutils"
+    )
+    cli_ids = re.findall(r'id="([^"]*)"', cli_out)
+
+    doctree = publish_doctree(
+        DOCUTILS_CROSS_CHECK_CORPUS,
+        parser=Parser(),
+        settings_overrides={
+            "myst_heading_anchors": 6,
+            "doctitle_xform": False,
+            "myst_heading_slug_func": "docutils",
+        },
+    )
+    doc_slugs = [
+        section["slug"]
+        for section in doctree.findall(nodes.section)
+        if "slug" in section
+    ]
+
+    assert cli_ids == doc_slugs
@@ -597,6 +597,48 @@ def test_text_node_line_stamping():
     assert lines["note body"] is None
 
 
+def test_empty_slug_means_no_anchor():
+    """A heading whose title slugifies to nothing gets no anchor.
+
+    In particular the empty slug takes no part in deduplication, so a later
+    empty-slugging heading must not receive a nonsense ``-1`` anchor id.
+    """
+    doctree = publish_doctree(
+        source="# !!!\n\n# ???\n",
+        parser=Parser(),
+        settings_overrides={
+            "warning_stream": io.StringIO(),
+            "doctitle_xform": False,
+            "myst_heading_anchors": 2,
+        },
+    )
+    for section in doctree.findall(nodes.section):
+        assert "slug" not in section.attributes, section.attributes
+        assert section["ids"] and all(not i.startswith("-") for i in section["ids"]), (
+            section["ids"]
+        )
+
+
+def test_docutils_slug_preset():
+    """The ``docutils`` preset produces make_id-style anchors.
+
+    Non-Latin titles slugify to nothing under this preset, so those headings
+    get no anchor.
+    """
+    doctree = publish_doctree(
+        source="# Привет\n\n# 2.0\n\n# Hello World\n\n# Straße & Œuvre\n",
+        parser=Parser(),
+        settings_overrides={
+            "warning_stream": io.StringIO(),
+            "doctitle_xform": False,
+            "myst_heading_anchors": 2,
+            "myst_heading_slug_func": "docutils",
+        },
+    )
+    slugs = [section.get("slug") for section in doctree.findall(nodes.section)]
+    assert slugs == [None, None, "hello-world", "strasze-oeuvre"]
+
+
 def test_definition_list_orphan_definition():
     """A definition with no preceding term errors, but keeps its content.