Publish Assistant

Hugo-generated website that helps researchers:

• identify important venues to publish in;
• keep track of submission deadlines;
• retrieve important papers for each issue.

---

Overview

The site is domain-driven: a researcher picks a research area (e.g. "edge and cloud systems") and the assistant builds a curated, ranked, up-to-date snapshot of where to publish, when to submit, and what to read. The output is a static Hugo site that can be rebuilt on demand.

Multiple research topics live under the same Hugo instance as subsites (/cloud-edge/, /embedded-systems/, …). Each topic has its own venue list, deadlines, digests, and calendar. Layouts, theme, and JavaScript are shared.

Work is split between automated scripts (data fetching, Hugo content generation) and agent tasks (domain curation, paper selection, deadline gap-filling). The README below documents both halves so the site can be kept fresh over time.

---

Repository Layout

publish-assistant/
├── .gitea/workflows/gh-pages.yaml        # CI: renders the site, deploys to the gh-pages branch
├── site/                                 # Hugo project
│   ├── hugo.toml
│   ├── package.json                      # FullCalendar deps (resolved by Hugo's js.Build)
│   ├── themes/PaperMod/                  # PaperMod theme (git submodule — never edit in place)
│   ├── assets/
│   │   ├── js/calendar.js                # FullCalendar bootstrap, bundled by js.Build
│   │   └── css/extended/custom.css       # Theme overrides (auto-appended by PaperMod's head)
│   ├── layouts/
│   │   ├── _default/calendar.html        # FullCalendar layout
│   │   ├── _default/digests.html         # Digest list layout
│   │   ├── _default/_markup/render-link.html  # Rewrites root-relative links for subpath baseURL
│   │   └── partials/
│   │       ├── header.html               # Section-aware nav override
│   │       └── extend_head.html          # Calendar CSS injection
│   ├── content/                          # Generated — do not edit by hand
│   │   ├── _index.md                     # Global landing page
│   │   └── <topic>/                      # One subdir per topic, e.g. cloud-edge/
│   │       ├── _index.md                 # Topic home page
│   │       ├── venues/                   # Venue pages (generated)
│   │       ├── calendar/                 # Deadline calendar (generated)
│   │       └── digests/                  # Paper digests (generated)
│   └── data/
│       ├── topics.yaml                   # Topic registry (nav + build loop)
│       ├── rankings/                     # Shared across all topics
│       │   ├── icore.csv                 # ICORE conference rankings
│       │   └── scimago.csv               # SCImago journal rankings (manual download, committed)
│       └── <topic>/                      # One subdir per topic, e.g. cloud-edge/
│           ├── venues.yaml               # Master venue list ← primary edit target
│           ├── deadlines.yaml            # Deadline cache; manual entries preserved
│           ├── best_papers.yaml          # Best-paper awards
│           └── papers/
│               ├── <V>-<Y>-candidates.yaml   # Full paper list (pa-fetch-papers)
│               └── <V>-<Y>-digest.yaml       # Curated selection (agent, Task 3)
├── src/publish_assistant/                # Python package
│   ├── fetch_icore.py
│   ├── fetch_scimago.py
│   ├── fetch_deadlines.py
│   ├── fetch_papers.py
│   ├── fetch_best_papers.py
│   └── generate_content.py
├── pyproject.toml                        # uv project; CLI entry points
├── uv.lock
├── build.sh
└── README.md

Topic isolation: each topic owns its site/data/<topic>/ directory (venues, deadlines, papers) and generates into site/content/<topic>/. The shared site/data/rankings/ CSVs are reused by every topic. The nav bar automatically shows topic-relative Venues / Calendar / Digests links when inside a topic, and lists all topics from topics.yaml on the root page.

---

Setup

uv sync                        # installs all dependencies + registers CLI tools
npm --prefix site ci           # FullCalendar packages; required for any hugo build

# Available commands after sync:
uv run pa-fetch-icore
uv run pa-fetch-scimago
uv run pa-fetch-deadlines
uv run pa-fetch-best-papers
uv run pa-fetch-papers --venue OSDI --year 2025
uv run pa-generate

# Local dev server:
./build.sh --dev
# or, to process one topic without re-fetching:
./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic cloud-edge --dev

site/assets/js/calendar.js imports @fullcalendar/*, and Hugo's js.Build resolves those from site/node_modules/ at render time. That directory is gitignored, so a fresh clone needs npm --prefix site ci before hugo (or build.sh) will succeed.

Cloning: the theme is a submodule — git clone --recurse-submodules, or git submodule update --init --recursive after the fact.

---

Deployment

.gitea/workflows/gh-pages.yaml runs on every push to main (and on manual dispatch): checkout with submodules → install Hugo (pinned via HUGO_VERSION) → npm ci in site/ → hugo --source site --minify --gc --baseURL "$SITE_BASE_URL" → push site/public/ to the orphan gh-pages branch with peaceiris/actions-gh-pages.

CI does not fetch data and does not run build.sh. Everything under site/content/ is generated locally by ./build.sh and committed; CI only renders it. If generated content is not committed, the deployed site is stale.

Base URL: the site is served from a subdirectory (https://pub.sqrt.fr/<owner>/<repo>/ by default). Override with the repo variable SITE_BASE_URL (Settings → Actions → Variables) if the site moves. Because generated Markdown stores links as root-relative paths (/cloud-edge/venues/…), three layouts run them through relURL so they survive the subpath — see "Subpath-safe links" under Hugo Content Structure.

---

Data Sources

Source	What it provides	Automatable?	Known issues
ICORE	Conference rankings (A*, A, B, C)	Yes	Pagination uses javascript:jumpPage('N') — handled in fetch_icore.py
SCImago	Journal quartiles, SJR, H-index	Blocked	Anti-bot returns HTML. A manually downloaded CSV is committed at site/data/rankings/scimago.csv; pa-generate --scimago matches journals by title. Inline venues.yaml values still win.
DBLP	Paper metadata by venue	Yes	Use dblp_key field in venues.yaml
OpenAlex	Papers, open-access links	Yes	Fallback when DBLP is thin
WikiCFP	Submission deadlines	Partially	See detailed notes below
Conference websites	Authoritative deadlines	Partially	See Task 2
jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards/	Best paper awards since 1996, ~32 venues	Yes	Manually maintained; run pa-fetch-best-papers annually

---

WikiCFP Integration — Detailed Notes

WikiCFP is the primary deadline source but has several quirks that required workarounds:

HTML structure: Detail pages use <th> for row labels (not <td>). The parser in fetch_cfp_details() specifically looks for <th> + <td> pairs. Do not revert to find_all("td") — it will find zero deadline rows.

Direct ID lookup: Add wikicfp_id: "<event_id>" to a venue entry in venues.yaml to skip the search and fetch that page directly. This avoids wrong matches on common acronyms. Verified IDs for the cloud-edge topic:

Venue	WikiCFP event ID
SOSP	191399
EuroSys	186524	superseded — source: manual (two cycles)
SoCC	191071	superseded — source: manual (two cycles)
Middleware	190153	superseded — source: manual (two cycles)
IPDPS	189093	superseded — source: manual (2027 edition)
HPDC	191029

A venue whose deadlines.yaml entry says source: manual is skipped by the fetcher regardless of its wikicfp_id; the ID is kept so the lookup still works if the entry is ever handed back to WikiCFP.

Skipping search: Set wikicfp_id: false to skip WikiCFP entirely for a venue (e.g., ATC, SC, SEC — where the search returns wrong events). Deadlines for these must be filled manually.

Conferences not on WikiCFP (for systems/networking): OSDI, NSDI, USENIX ATC, SC, MobiSys, SEC. Use wikicfp_id: false for all of them.

For the embedded-systems topic only EWSN has a WikiCFP entry for its current edition (190920); every other conference is wikicfp_id: false:

Venue	Why
EWSN	190920	current edition; source: manual (two cycles)
RTSS, RTAS	WikiCFP series stops at the 2025 editions
EMSOFT, CASES	WikiCFP series is stale (2025 / 2023); ESWEEK publishes one shared date set for both, so they always carry identical deadlines
ECRTS, LCTES	latest WikiCFP entry is the edition that already took place; no next edition announced yet
SenSys	SenSys, IPSN and IoTDI merged into a single conference in 2026 — WikiCFP still lists the three old series

Merged venues: SenSys, IPSN and IoTDI are now one conference, the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Embedded Artificial Intelligence and Sensing Systems, kept under the SenSys acronym (which is also what ICORE and DBLP still use). Do not add IPSN or IoTDI as separate venues.

Manual deadline entries: Add entries with source: manual to site/data/<topic>/deadlines.yaml. The fetcher preserves all source: manual entries across runs — indefinitely, and by design: WikiCFP cannot express multi-cycle venues and does not carry most systems conferences at all, so re-fetching a manual entry would replace researched data with worse data or nothing. Nothing refreshes these but a person or an agent.

Because of that, a manual entry can sit unchanged long after its deadline passes. The fetcher does not fix this, but it does report it: any entry whose recorded rounds have all elapsed is listed under stale: in deadlines.yaml and printed at the end of the run. See Task 7. Format:

ATC:
  source: manual
  event_dates: Nov 16-18, 2026
  location: Hong Kong
  submission_deadline: Jun 10, 2026
  notification: Sep 18, 2026
  camera_ready: Oct 16, 2026
  cfp_url: https://sigops.org/s/conferences/atc/2026/cfp.html

Multiple Submission Cycles

Many systems conferences run more than one submission round per year, all feeding the same event. Recording only one round makes the site claim a conference has been missed when a later round is still open. Give such a venue a cycles list instead of top-level deadline fields:

EuroSys:
  source: manual
  event_dates: Apr 19-23, 2027       # event fields stay at the top level
  location: Rabat, Morocco
  cfp_url: https://2027.eurosys.org/cfp.html
  cycles:
    - name: Spring                    # free text, verbatim from the CFP
      abstract_deadline: May 7, 2026
      submission_deadline: May 14, 2026
      notification: Aug 21, 2026
      camera_ready: Sep 25, 2026
    - name: Fall
      abstract_deadline: Sep 17, 2026
      submission_deadline: Sep 24, 2026
      notification: Jan 29, 2027
      camera_ready: Mar 5, 2027

Cycle fields are name, abstract_deadline, submission_deadline, notification, camera_ready, plus an optional per-cycle cfp_url where a venue publishes a separate call per round. Everything else (source, event_dates, location, cfp_url) describes the event and stays at the top level.

Single-round venues need no change. load_deadlines() folds a flat entry into a one-element cycles list on read, so the two shapes are interchangeable and only genuinely multi-round venues need the extra nesting.

What the generator does with cycles:

Output	Behaviour
Venue page	Multi-cycle venues get a Submission Cycles table with every round; the next open one is bolded and marked (next). Single-cycle venues keep the Upcoming Deadline block unchanged.
Venue index	One row per venue, showing the next open cycle with its name appended to the paper deadline.
Calendar table	One row per still-open cycle, with a Cycle column, sorted by paper deadline. A venue whose every round has elapsed drops out of this table into an Awaiting the next call table below it, showing the last round that ran — an elapsed round sorts to the top by date and would otherwise read as the next thing due.
Calendar grid	One event set per cycle; titles read EuroSys Fall — paper deadline. Elapsed cycles are kept — the grid is time-indexed, so past rounds only show when you navigate back to their month.
Front matter	next_deadline / abstract_deadline / notification / camera_ready reflect the next cycle. Multi-cycle venues additionally carry cycles and next_cycle.

"Next" means the earliest cycle whose paper deadline has not passed; if every round has elapsed, the last one, so a page shows the most recent round rather than going blank.

WikiCFP cannot express this. It lists one deadline set per event, so a multi-round venue fetched from WikiCFP will silently record whichever round WikiCFP happens to hold. Research such venues from the CFP itself and mark them source: manual — otherwise the next fetcher run overwrites the extra rounds. SoCC, Middleware and IPDPS were converted this way even though they still carry wikicfp_id in venues.yaml.

---

venues.yaml Schema

conferences:
  - acronym: SOSP
    full_name: "ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles"
    domain: [<topic-slug>, operating-systems, distributed-systems]
    url: "https://sigops.org/s/conferences/sosp/"
    dblp_key: "conf/sosp"
    wikicfp_id: "191399"      # direct lookup; omit to use search; false to skip entirely

journals:
  - acronym: TPDS
    full_name: "IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems"
    domain: [<topic-slug>, parallel-computing, distributed-systems]
    issn: "1045-9219"
    url: "https://www.computer.org/csdl/journal/td"
    dblp_key: "journals/tpds"
    submission_model: rolling
    scimago_quartile: Q1      # optional — falls back to rankings/scimago.csv by title
    scimago_sjr: "1.560"
    scimago_h_index: "131"

Important: Hugo reserves the front matter field url as a page URL override. generate_content.py maps venues.yaml:url → front matter field homepage to avoid this conflict.

Journal Special Issues

Journals with submission_model: rolling have no fixed deadlines, so WikiCFP yields nothing for them. Special issue CFPs are the only dated journal deadlines worth tracking. Add a special_issues list to the journal entry:

journals:
  - acronym: TPDS
    # ... existing fields ...
    special_issues:
      - title: "<Special issue title, verbatim from the CFP>"
        guest_editors: ["<Editor One>", "<Editor Two>"]
        cfp_url: "https://<link to the CFP itself, not the journal's CFP index>"
        abstract_deadline: "Aug 15, 2026"
        submission_deadline: "Sep 1, 2026"
        notification: "Jan 2027"

Every field must come from a published CFP. There is no fetcher for these, so nothing validates them — an unverified entry publishes a deadline that looks authoritative and names real people as editors. Record cfp_url pointing at the specific call, so any reader can check the entry against its source.

Special issue deadlines appear in three places:

• Journal page — a "Special Issues" table below the journal metadata
• Calendar page — a "Journal Special Issues" table below the conference deadlines (which themselves split into open cycles and "Awaiting the next call"). The heading always renders; with no entries recorded it carries a line saying no call is open, so the page doesn't read as if journals went untracked
• FullCalendar grid — events colored purple (#7b2cbf), titled ACR SI — Title — deadline type, carrying cfp_url in extendedProps

Dates use the same MMM D, YYYY format as conference deadlines. notification additionally accepts month-only precision (Jan 2027), which lands on the first of that month in the calendar grid; the tables always print the raw string.

These entries are source: manual by nature — WikiCFP doesn't cover journal special issues. Add them directly to site/data/<topic>/venues.yaml.

---

topics.yaml Schema

topics:
  - slug: cloud-edge
    title: "Edge and Cloud Systems"
    description: "Conferences and journals for edge computing, cloud systems, and distributed systems."
  - slug: embedded-systems
    title: "Embedded Systems"
    description: "Conferences and journals for real-time systems, embedded software, and sensing systems."

The slug must match the directory names under site/data/ and site/content/. It also becomes the URL prefix (/cloud-edge/, /embedded-systems/). The title appears in the nav bar on the root page and on the topic's section home.

---

Scripts

All scripts are installed as CLI entry points by uv sync.

pa-fetch-icore

Downloads ICORE rankings. Shared across all topics — run once per build.

uv run pa-fetch-icore                           # fetch all
uv run pa-fetch-icore --query "distributed systems"

pa-fetch-scimago

Downloads SCImago CSV. Currently blocked by anti-bot. Will raise a descriptive error if it receives HTML instead of CSV (build.sh treats this as a warning and continues on cached data).

uv run pa-fetch-scimago --list-areas    # show area codes
uv run pa-fetch-scimago --area 1705     # networks

The working substitute is a manual download: scimagojr.com → Journal Rankings → pick an area → Download, saved as site/data/rankings/scimago.csv (semicolon-separated; the loader sniffs the delimiter). That file is committed and pa-generate reads it, so journals without inline scimago_* fields still get a quartile, SJR, and H-index. Matching is by full_name against the CSV Title column (exact, then substring), so a journal whose name differs from SCImago's still needs inline values.

pa-fetch-deadlines

Fetches submission deadlines from WikiCFP for a specific topic. Preserves source: manual entries.

uv run pa-fetch-deadlines \
  --venues site/data/cloud-edge/venues.yaml \
  --output site/data/cloud-edge/deadlines.yaml \
  [--no-probe]

Writes three report keys alongside deadlines::

Key	Meaning
missing:	No CFP found at all — acronyms only. Fill in by hand (Task 2).
stale:	The entry exists but every recorded round has elapsed. One map per venue: acronym, last_deadline, source, cfp_url, and next_edition_url when the probe found one. Refresh by hand (Task 7).

Next-edition probe: for stale venues only, the script bumps the year in the recorded cfp_url (and, failing that, the venue's url) and checks whether that page exists — mobisys/2026/ → mobisys/2027/, sc26.supercomputing.org → sc27.…, ipdps2027/2027-call-for-papers.html → ipdps2028/2028-…. A candidate counts only if it returns 200, mentions the target year (guarding against hosts that serve a landing page for any path), and is newer than any year the entry already records (venues.yaml URLs lag — SC's still points at sc24). This does not read deadlines; it only tells you which venues are worth researching now. --no-probe skips it.

The run ends with a summary naming every missing and stale venue. It always exits 0 — build.sh runs under set -euo pipefail, so a non-zero exit would abort the build before content is generated.

After running: check the summary, then do Task 2 (missing) and Task 7 (stale).

pa-fetch-best-papers

Scrapes jeffhuang.com/best_paper_awards/ and writes best_papers.yaml. Run once per year.

uv run pa-fetch-best-papers

pa-fetch-papers

Fetches paper lists from DBLP (with OpenAlex fallback).

uv run pa-fetch-papers --venue OSDI --year 2024
uv run pa-fetch-papers --venue TPDS --year 2024 --source openalex

pa-generate

Regenerates all Hugo content for one topic from its data files. Safe to re-run at any time.

# Explicit (for a specific topic):
uv run pa-generate \
  --venues    site/data/cloud-edge/venues.yaml \
  --deadlines site/data/cloud-edge/deadlines.yaml \
  --papers-dir site/data/cloud-edge/papers \
  --content   site/content/cloud-edge \
  --base-path /cloud-edge

# Defaults (cloud-edge):
uv run pa-generate

--base-path prefixes all internal links in generated markdown (e.g. /cloud-edge/venues/…). It must match the topic slug in the URL.

Preserved fields (never overwritten): notes, deadline_source. Stripped fields (removed on regen to avoid stale data): url (Hugo reserved), papers.

build.sh

Full pipeline orchestrator. Loops over all topics in topics.yaml by default.

./build.sh                          # full build, all topics
./build.sh --topic cloud-edge       # one topic only
./build.sh --skip-rankings          # skip icore/scimago fetches (use cached CSVs)
./build.sh --skip-deadlines         # use cached deadlines.yaml
./build.sh --dev                    # hugo server instead of build
./build.sh --topic cloud-edge --dev # dev server, one topic

---

Hugo Content Structure

Multi-topic routing

Hugo treats site/content/<topic>/ as a section. All pages inside it are served under /<topic>/. The nav bar partial (site/layouts/partials/header.html) detects .Section at render time:

• Inside a topic (cloud-edge, embedded-systems, …): renders Venues / Calendar / Digests links relative to that section.
• At the root (/): renders one link per topic from site/data/topics.yaml.

To add a topic: populate site/data/topics.yaml + site/data/<topic>/venues.yaml, then run ./build.sh --topic <slug>. The new section appears in the global nav automatically.

Subpath-safe links

pa-generate writes root-relative links (/cloud-edge/venues/…). Those are correct when the site is served from a domain root, but they ignore the subdirectory in baseURL and 404 under https://pub.sqrt.fr/<owner>/<repo>/. Rather than teaching the generator about deployment, three layouts normalize at render time — each strips the leading slash so relURL will prepend the baseURL subpath (relURL leaves already-root-relative input alone):

• layouts/_default/_markup/render-link.html — Hugo render hook applied to every Markdown link in generated bodies. Protocol-relative //host/… links are left as-is.
• layouts/_default/calendar.html — rewrites the url of each event before jsonify, so calendar clicks land on the right page.
• layouts/partials/header.html — nav links go through relURL, and the active-item check compares against .RelPermalink, which carries the same prefix.

All of this is a no-op when the site is served from the domain root (the local dev server).

Theme and styling

themes/PaperMod is a pristine git submodule pinned to an upstream commit. Never edit files inside it: those changes cannot be committed from this repo, and CI checks the submodule out fresh, so they would silently vanish from the deployed site. Project CSS lives in site/assets/css/extended/custom.css, which PaperMod's head.html appends after its own stylesheet — currently a shorter .first-entry hero, since PaperMod reserves 320px/260px for a lead image the site does not use. Calendar-only CSS stays in layouts/partials/extend_head.html, gated on layout == "calendar".

Venues

site/content/<topic>/venues/_index.md — overview, links to conferences and journals. Generated.

site/content/<topic>/venues/conferences/_index.md — table of all conferences sorted by ICORE rank with deadlines, domains, and digest count. Generated.

site/content/<topic>/venues/journals/_index.md — table of all journals sorted by SCImago quartile. Generated.

Each venue page body is fully generated Markdown. The body includes a metadata table (rank, domains, latest digest link), an upcoming deadline block, and previous-edition info blocks (paper count, topics, digest link).

Calendar

site/content/<topic>/calendar/_index.md — uses layout: calendar. Events are embedded as JSON-ready YAML in the events: front matter field by pa-generate. Colors: orange = abstract deadline, red = paper deadline, blue = conference dates.

Digests

site/content/<topic>/digests/<VENUE>-<YEAR>/index.md — leaf page (index.md, not _index.md). Body contains the full paper list with TL;DR and why-notable for each paper. Papers data lives in site/data/<topic>/papers/<V>-<Y>-digest.yaml.

---

Agent Prompts

Ready-to-use prompts. Paste directly into Claude Code (or any agent) as a starting point.

---

Bootstrap a new topic

Bootstrap a new publish-assistant topic for "<TOPIC NAME>" (slug: <slug>).

Steps:
1. Research the top 10–15 conferences and 5–10 journals for this domain. Use
   csrankings.org, the ICORE portal (portal.core.edu.au/conf-ranks/), and
   SCImago (scimagojr.com) for rankings.
2. For each conference: record acronym, full name, ICORE rank, official
   website URL for the upcoming edition, DBLP stream key (conf/<key>), and
   WikiCFP event ID if you can find it (set wikicfp_id: false for short or
   ambiguous acronyms).
3. For each journal: record acronym, full name, ISSN, DBLP stream key
   (journals/<key>), submission model (rolling / special issues). Quartile,
   SJR, and H-index come from site/data/rankings/scimago.csv when full_name
   matches the CSV Title; add them inline to venues.yaml only when it doesn't.
4. Create site/data/<slug>/venues.yaml following the schema in the README.
5. Create site/data/<slug>/papers/ (empty directory).
6. Add the topic to site/data/topics.yaml:
     - slug: <slug>
       title: "<TOPIC NAME>"
       description: "<one-line description>"
7. Create site/content/<slug>/_index.md:
     ---
     title: "<TOPIC NAME>"
     description: "<one-line description>"
     draft: false
     ---
8. Run: ./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic <slug>
   (Use --skip-rankings to reuse cached ICORE data if already fresh.)
9. For any conferences under deadlines.yaml missing:, do the manual deadline
   task (Task 2 in the README).
10. Run: ./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic <slug>
    Then: hugo --source site --minify
    Confirm the site builds cleanly and /<slug>/venues/ loads correctly.
11. Commit the generated site/content/<slug>/ tree along with the data files —
    CI renders committed content and never regenerates it.

Checklist before finishing:
- [ ] site/data/<slug>/venues.yaml has all venues with correct dblp_key
- [ ] wikicfp_id set or false on every conference
- [ ] Every journal shows a quartile (from scimago.csv, or inline if unmatched)
- [ ] site/data/topics.yaml updated
- [ ] site/content/<slug>/_index.md created
- [ ] ./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic <slug> runs without errors
- [ ] hugo --source site --minify succeeds
- [ ] Generated content under site/content/<slug>/ committed

---

Add a venue to an existing topic

Add <ACRONYM> to the publish-assistant topic "<slug>".

1. Look up:
   - Full name and ICORE rank (conferences) or SCImago quartile + SJR + H-index (journals)
   - Official website URL for the upcoming edition
   - DBLP stream key at dblp.org
   - WikiCFP event ID, or note if this acronym is ambiguous (set wikicfp_id: false)
2. Append the entry to site/data/<slug>/venues.yaml following the existing schema.
3. Run: uv run pa-fetch-deadlines \
         --venues site/data/<slug>/venues.yaml \
         --output site/data/<slug>/deadlines.yaml
4. If the conference appears under missing: in deadlines.yaml, find the deadline
   on the official CFP page and add a source: manual entry.
5. Run: uv run pa-generate (defaults to cloud-edge) or with explicit --venues /
   --content / --base-path flags for the target topic.
6. Confirm the new venue page appears at /<slug>/venues/conferences/<acronym>/
   (or journals/) with correct metadata. For a journal, check that the quartile
   resolved from site/data/rankings/scimago.csv; if it came out blank, the
   full_name doesn't match the CSV Title — add scimago_* fields inline.
7. Commit the regenerated site/content/<slug>/ files together with the data
   changes; CI deploys committed content and does not regenerate it.

---

Build a digest for a venue + year

Build a paper digest for <ACRONYM> <YEAR> in the publish-assistant topic "<slug>".

1. Run: uv run pa-fetch-papers --venue <ACRONYM> --year <YEAR>
   This writes site/data/<slug>/papers/<ACRONYM>-<YEAR>-candidates.yaml.

2. Run: uv run pa-fetch-best-papers
   (Skip if site/data/best_papers.yaml already exists and is recent.)

3. Read the candidates file. Select 8–15 papers that are:
   - Methodologically novel (new algorithms, system designs, formal proofs)
   - Attracting community attention (highly cited if issue is ≥1 year old;
     well-known authors or top-venue co-publications if recent)
   - Representative of the breadth of the issue (avoid over-indexing on one subtheme)
   - Preferably open-access (arXiv, USENIX, ACM OpenTOC)
   Flag any paper in best_papers.yaml (include it; it's a strong signal).

4. For each selected paper write:
   - tldr: one sentence, the core technical contribution
   - why_notable: 1–2 sentences — novelty, impact, surprising result, or
     influential technique; what would make a program committee member
     recommend this paper to colleagues

5. Write site/data/<slug>/papers/<ACRONYM>-<YEAR>-digest.yaml:
     venue: <ACRONYM>
     year: <YEAR>
     date: "<YYYY-MM-DD of first conference day>"
     tags: [<3–5 topic tags>]
     selected:
       - dblp_key: "..."
         title: "..."
         tldr: "..."
         why_notable: "..."

6. Run: uv run pa-generate (or with explicit flags for the topic)
7. Confirm the digest page at /<slug>/digests/<acronym>-<year>/ renders correctly.

---

Annual cycle refresh for a topic

Refresh the publish-assistant topic "<slug>" for the new conference cycle.

1. For each conference in site/data/<slug>/venues.yaml:
   a. Check whether the url field points to the upcoming edition (many venues
      use year-specific URLs like osdi26, 2027.eurosys.org, mobisys/2026/).
      Update any that point to past editions.
   b. Verify wikicfp_id still points to the upcoming edition by visiting
      http://wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=<ID>.
      If it points to a past event, search WikiCFP for the new edition.
      If the new event page doesn't exist yet, set wikicfp_id: false and add
      a source: manual entry to deadlines.yaml; restore the ID once it appears.

2. Run: uv run pa-fetch-deadlines \
         --venues site/data/<slug>/venues.yaml \
         --output site/data/<slug>/deadlines.yaml

3. For each entry under missing: in deadlines.yaml, visit the conference CFP
   page and add a source: manual entry to deadlines.yaml.

4. Run: ./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic <slug>
   Then confirm hugo --source site --minify succeeds and all venue pages show
   correct upcoming deadlines.

Checklist:
- [ ] All conference url fields updated to upcoming edition
- [ ] All wikicfp_id values verified (or set to false + manual entry)
- [ ] missing: list in deadlines.yaml is empty
- [ ] Build succeeds, no broken links
- [ ] Regenerated site/content/<slug>/ committed so CI deploys the new deadlines

---

Keep deadlines current

Refresh the deadlines for the publish-assistant topic "<slug>".

1. Run: ./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic <slug>
   Read the summary the deadline fetch prints at the end — it lists every venue
   under missing: (no entry at all) and stale: (entry frozen on an edition that
   already ran), and for stale ones whether the next edition's page is online.

2. For each missing: venue, visit the official CFP page and add a source: manual
   entry to site/data/<slug>/deadlines.yaml (README Task 2).

3. For each stale: venue:
   - If the report printed "NEW EDITION: <url>", open it and record the new
     round(s): abstract deadline, paper deadline, notification, camera-ready,
     event dates, location, cfp_url.
   - If it printed "next edition not announced yet", still check the venue site
     once — the probe only tries a year-bumped URL, so it misses venues that
     move host between editions (HPDC) or use an unrelated page name.
   - If the new call genuinely is not out, leave the entry untouched. It shows
     under "Awaiting the next call" on the calendar, which is correct.
   - Multi-round venues keep source: manual and a cycles: list. Do not hand them
     back to WikiCFP — it records only one round and would drop the others.
   - Update the venue's url in venues.yaml if it still points at the old edition.

4. Re-run: ./build.sh --skip-rankings --topic <slug>

Checklist:
- [ ] Every stale: venue either updated or confirmed to have no published CFP
- [ ] missing: list empty, or each entry explained
- [ ] No source: manual entry lost its cycles
- [ ] site/data/<slug>/ and the regenerated site/content/<slug>/ both committed
      (CI only runs hugo — it never regenerates content)

---

Agent Tasks (Reference)

Task 1 — Bootstrap a topic

See the "Bootstrap a new topic" prompt above. The one-shot checklist is embedded in the prompt.

Task 2 — Fill in missing deadlines

Trigger: pa-fetch-deadlines lists conferences under missing:, or a deadline looks wrong. For venues that have an entry whose rounds have all elapsed, see Task 7 instead — same research, different starting point.

1. For each missing conference, visit the official website's "Call for Papers" / "Important Dates" page.
2. Also check WikiCFP manually — if you find the right event ID, add wikicfp_id to venues.yaml so future runs fetch it automatically.
3. Extract: abstract deadline, paper deadline, notification, camera-ready, event dates, location.
4. Add a source: manual entry to site/data/<topic>/deadlines.yaml.
5. Run uv run pa-generate (with explicit flags for the topic).

Conferences reliably NOT on WikiCFP (systems/networking):

• USENIX family: OSDI, NSDI, USENIX ATC, USENIX Security — use usenix.org
• SC — use sc<YY>.supercomputing.org
• MobiSys — use sigmobile.org/mobisys/<YEAR>/
• SEC — use acm-ieee-sec.org/<YEAR>/
• Short/common acronyms (ATC, SEC) collide with unrelated events — always use wikicfp_id: false

Task 3 — Build a digest

See the "Build a digest for a venue + year" prompt above.

Digest YAML format:

venue: OSDI
year: 2024
date: "2024-07-10"
tags: [llm-serving, distributed-systems, storage]

selected:
  - dblp_key: "conf/osdi/ZhongLCHZL0024"
    title: "DistServe: Disaggregating Prefill and Decoding ..."
    tldr: "Separates prefill and decode onto different GPU pools, eliminating head-of-line blocking."
    why_notable: "Became one of the most-cited LLM systems papers of 2024; disaggregation is now standard in production inference stacks."

Task 4 — Refresh rankings

1. Run uv run pa-fetch-icore for fresh ICORE data.
2. For SCImago: download the CSV manually from scimagojr.com and replace site/data/rankings/scimago.csv (commit it — CI does not fetch). The automated fetch is blocked.
3. For each journal in venues.yaml that carries inline scimago_quartile / scimago_sjr, compare against the new CSV and update if changed. Journals without inline values pick the new numbers up automatically on the next pa-generate.
4. Run ./build.sh --skip-deadlines (or per-topic with --topic <slug>).

Task 5 — Add a new venue mid-cycle

See the "Add a venue to an existing topic" prompt above.

Task 6 — Annual cycle refresh

See the "Annual cycle refresh for a topic" prompt above.

Task 7 — Keep deadlines current

Trigger: routine maintenance. Nothing in this repo refreshes deadlines on its own — no cron, no CI job, and manual entries are preserved forever by design (see "Manual deadline entries"). An agent has to run this, and should run it whenever picking the repo up.

1. Run ./build.sh --skip-rankings (add --topic <slug> to scope it). Read the summary the deadline fetch prints at the end.
2. missing: — no entry at all. Do Task 2.
3. stale: — the entry is frozen on an edition that already ran. For each one:
   • If the report says NEW EDITION: <url>, open it: the next call is already published, so the dates are there to be recorded.
   • Otherwise check the venue's site anyway before moving on — the probe only tries a year-bumped URL, so it misses venues that change host between editions (HPDC) or announce on a page with an unrelated name.
   • When the new CFP exists, replace that venue's rounds in deadlines.yaml, update event_dates, location, cfp_url, and the venue's url in venues.yaml if it points at the old edition. Keep source: manual on multi-cycle venues — see "WikiCFP cannot express this".
   • When it does not exist yet, leave the entry alone. It stays under "Awaiting the next call" on the calendar, which is the honest state.
4. Re-run ./build.sh --skip-rankings, then commit both site/data/<topic>/ and the regenerated site/content/<topic>/ — CI only runs hugo and will not regenerate anything.

Worth re-running even when no deadline changed: the calendar's open/elapsed split is computed against the date of the run, so the committed page drifts as rounds pass.

---

Known Gotchas (for agents picking this up)

• --base-path must match the topic slug: pa-generate --base-path /cloud-edge prefixes all internal links in generated markdown. If you run pa-generate without this flag (old default was /cloud-edge), all links on the new topic would resolve to /cloud-edge/... instead. Always pass explicit --base-path /<slug> when generating for a non-default topic, or use build.sh --topic <slug> which sets it automatically.
• Hugo url field: reserved by Hugo to override the page URL. venues.yaml uses url: but generate_content.py maps it to homepage: in front matter. Never write url: in Hugo front matter via the generator.
• PaperMod renders body, not front matter: all visible content must be in the Markdown body. Front matter is used only for metadata and Hugo taxonomy. If a page looks empty, check that _conf_body() / _journal_body() etc. are being called.
• _index.md vs index.md: section pages use _index.md (list template), leaf pages use index.md (single template). Digest pages are index.md — using _index.md makes them section pages and breaks pagination.
• Rankings CSVs are in site/data/rankings/: Hugo's data loader is configured to ignore data/rankings/*.csv via ignoreFiles in hugo.toml. If you move these files or add new CSVs, update ignoreFiles accordingly — Hugo cannot parse arbitrary CSV as a data map and will error on build.
• ICORE pagination: the ICORE portal uses javascript:jumpPage('N') links, not standard ?page=N URLs. fetch_icore.py handles this. If you get only 50 results instead of ~900, pagination is broken.
• SCImago blocked: pa-fetch-scimago will raise a clear error if anti-bot HTML is returned. Refresh site/data/rankings/scimago.csv by hand, or add data inline to venues.yaml.
• SCImago values resolve in two places: both the journal page and the journals index run _journal_ranks() — inline scimago_* fields in venues.yaml win, and rankings/scimago.csv fills the gap by full_name. The CSV writes SJR with a decimal comma (0,864); the loader normalises it to a dot so CSV-derived and inline values render alike. If a journal's quartile shows —, its full_name does not match the CSV Title.
• Never edit site/themes/PaperMod/: it is a submodule pinned to upstream, and CI checks it out fresh — edits there are not committed and disappear on deploy. Put CSS in site/assets/css/extended/custom.css and template overrides in site/layouts/.
• Generated content is committed, and CI never regenerates it: the Gitea workflow only runs hugo. After editing any site/data/ file, run ./build.sh (or pa-generate) and commit the resulting site/content/ diff, or the deployed site will not change.
• npm ci before hugo: js.Build resolves @fullcalendar/* from site/node_modules/, which is gitignored. A fresh clone that skips it gets a build error on the calendar page.
• Root-relative links vs. subpath baseURL: generated links start with /, which Hugo leaves untouched — they break when the site is served from a subdirectory. The render hook, calendar layout, and header partial each strip the leading slash and call relURL. If you add a layout that emits links from data, do the same; do not "fix" it by changing --base-path, which sets the topic prefix, not the deployment prefix.
• WikiCFP <th> labels: deadline detail pages use <th> for label cells, not <td>. The parser looks for <th>+<td> pairs.
• Calendar events: pa-generate embeds events as YAML in the events: front matter field. The layout at site/layouts/_default/calendar.html reads .Params.events and initializes FullCalendar. Do not remove the layout: calendar front matter field.
• Deadline preservation: never strip deadline fields from deadlines.yaml just because the submission window has closed. Remove an entry only once the conference has taken place.
• Nothing refreshes deadlines on its own: source: manual entries are preserved across every fetcher run by design, and there is no cron or CI job that would notice. A frozen entry is reported under stale:, never fixed. Run Task 7.
• The calendar's open/elapsed split is a build-time decision: pa-generate compares each cycle against the date it runs, so a round that lapses after the last build stays in the "Conference Deadlines" table until content is regenerated and committed. Re-running ./build.sh periodically is worthwhile even when no deadline data changed.
• WikiCFP IDs are edition-specific: each year's event gets a new ID. IDs verified at one point in time will be wrong once a new cycle begins. See Task 6 for the annual refresh checklist.

---

Future Considerations

• iCal feed — generate a .ics file from deadline data so researchers can subscribe from their calendar app.
• Email/RSS notifications — alert when a deadline is within N weeks.
• Citation tracking — periodically re-query OpenAlex for citation counts on digest papers.
• Best paper badge — pa-generate could cross-reference best_papers.yaml with digest candidates and add a best_paper_award: true flag, then render a badge in _digest_body().
• Automated WikiCFP ID discovery — when a venue has no wikicfp_id, attempt a search and record the result in venues.yaml for future runs (reduces manual work when bootstrapping new topics).
• Cross-topic venue pages — some venues (e.g., ASPLOS) span multiple topics. A future cross_listed: [embedded-systems, cloud-edge] field in venues.yaml could render the venue under multiple topic sections without duplicating data.