News and Activity: announcements on News and a self-updating Activity feed

[mmcky]

Goal: News carries only announcements people write, and Activity (library releases and lecture updates) refreshes itself every day and is shown beside News, on the home page, and in a log at /activity/ with type filters and day links.

Where we stand (verified 2026-10-01)

• The feed now writes every kind of entry, lecture entries included. All three slices of QuantEcon/reports-activity#91 are merged. Release entries came first (QuantEcon/reports-activity#92 and QuantEcon/reports-activity#93, 2026-09-29). Lecture, translation and book entries followed (QuantEcon/reports-activity#94). Then came Claude summaries and News-candidate flags (QuantEcon/reports-activity#96), whose last commit turned the new entries on; both merged on 2026-09-30. A daily workflow in QuantEcon/reports-activity writes the entries and opens one PR here as QuantEcon Activity Feed (App 4063768).
• The first lecture entry is live. The feed's first lecture PR, Activity: 1 new entry for 2026-09-29 #293, opened on 2026-09-30 with the French edition's update of Sep 29 and its summary, and the maintainer merged it. That run also replayed the days since the old reporter stopped, Sep 28 and 29: no site published on Sep 28, and of Sep 29's six publishes only the French edition's had a change that counts. quantecon.org/activity/ now shows 31 rows.
• Daily PRs wait for review for now. ACTIVITY_FEED_MODE has been pr since 2026-09-30, so the first summaries are read before they're published. Once it's back to merge, each daily PR merges itself when build passes; the first to do so is the proof Let the reporter App merge its daily Activity PRs #275 still needs.
• The pages are live. Phase 4 is done: the restyled /activity/ (Restyle /activity/ with the shared rows, a type filter and day links #277, via activity: restyle /activity/ with the shared rows, a type filter and day links #290), the Activity rail on /news/ with its mobile panel (Add the Activity rail and mobile panel to /news/ #278, via activity: add the Activity rail to /news/, with a collapsed panel below 1200px #291) and the "Latest activity" strip on the home page (Add the "Latest activity" strip to the home page #279, via activity: add the Latest activity strip under the home page's news cards #292), all merged and deployed on 2026-09-30. The choices made on the rail's preview are recorded in Design review: Activity and News pages #266.
• News candidates go to QuantEcon/reports-activity#97: a library's first release, a site's first or unmapped publish, or a config-only change. Its three so far are all config-only, one styling change and two execution timeouts, so the config-only flag may need tightening.
• Foundations. The data contract (Harden the Activity data contract before automatic merges #284, via activity: harden the data contract before automatic merges #286) and the build-time rows (Compute the Activity rows at build time, with tests #276, via activity: compute the Activity rows at build time, with tests #285) have been on main since 2026-09-29. The old reporter is retired (Retire the old reporter's News output #274), and its 14 news/* branches have been deleted.

Next: switch ACTIVITY_FEED_MODE back to merge after a few days of reviewed PRs. The first PR that merges itself, with build green and no approval, completes #275 and Phase 3. Then #289 checks the live site. #280, the Activity RSS feed, is unblocked now that the replayed days are published. Later comes the June to September backfill, as replay PRs the maintainer reviews (QuantEcon/reports-activity#91).

Background

• The problem. The reporter bot filed its daily release lists and weekly lecture digests as News posts. At that frequency they crowded out announcements: on main before Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265, two of the three home-page "Latest News" cards were release lists. They also left 14 draft PRs waiting for review.
• How it was settled. NEWS: move to a single weekly news post to reduce noise + only report changes to lectures and major software (QuantEcon.py, mystmd etc.) #225 raised the problem. The session that followed split the updates into two streams, defined by the type of information:
  • News: announcements people write.
  • Activity: the reporter's log of releases, lecture updates and translation updates.
• Where the streams appear was then settled by the design review in Design review: Activity and News pages #266.
• Cadence (decided in Design review: Activity and News pages #266). Activity is to update daily, and each daily PR is to merge itself once the data check passes, so it needs no one's time.

Findings

Finding	Severity
After #265 merges, Activity gets no new entries until the reporter writes Activity data	High
The old reporter keeps opening News drafts until it is paused	High
The reporter passes noise (version bumps, config changes) and misses reader-facing lecture changes, e.g. QuantEcon/lecture-python.myst#760 and the eight lectures in QuantEcon/lecture-python.myst#1001	High
Daily PRs need a person to merge them, and nothing makes a merge wait for the data check: main has no required checks, and auto-merge is off	Medium
Activity isn't visible from /news/ or the home page, and /activity/ has interim styling with no filters or day links	Medium

Plan

Work items and their order.

• The work items are the sub-issue list. The top open item is next, and completed items keep their place.
• Constraints between items are native dependencies.
• The phases are below. The table carries each phase's intent and exit criterion only.

Phase	Intent	Exit criterion
Phase 1 — Split News from Activity	Take the reporter's output off News and give it its own page and data, under agreed definitions	#265 is merged, the old reporter is paused, and its drafts are closed
Phase 2 — Design the Activity pages	Design the /news/ rail, the home strip and the restyled /activity/	A build-ready handoff, with every design decision recorded
Phase 3 — Automatic daily updates	The reporter writes Activity data once a day, and its PR merges itself once the data check passes	The first daily run lands on main without a person merging it, after its data check passes, and the paused days are replayed
Phase 4 — Build the Activity pages	Implement the round-2 handoff as amended in #266	The rail, the strip and the restyled /activity/ are live. Their data-dependent acceptance checks pass on #276's frozen copy of the data, and their layout checks pass on the previews

Gates.

• The split waits on a decision. It can't merge until the stream definitions are approved: a decision gate.
• Phases 3 and 4 wait on Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265 merging, not on the rest of Phase 1. The reporter writes, and the build reads, the _data/activity/ format and the data check that Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265 puts on main. The reporter's --existing option also reads that data back.

Sequencing rationale.

• Phase 3 comes before Phase 4. Activity is frozen from the day Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265 merges until the reporter writes new entries, and a stale feed undercuts the point of the split. The build items only need the data format, so they can proceed alongside it.
• In Phase 3, the merge permission comes first. It's a small admin setting that the reporter's first automatic merge needs.
• If the freeze runs long, QuantEcon/reports-activity#91 can ship release entries first, since they need no AI, and lecture entries after.

Out of scope / what does not change

• Option B (an integrated timeline on /news/, Discussion: an integrated News and Activity timeline on /news/ (Option B) #268) and the home-page activity chart (Future idea: add an "activity pulse" (weekly bar chart and latest activity) to the home page's Latest News #267) are parked. They are not part of this project's definition of done.
• The stream definitions describe the type of information only. Where each stream appears is decided in Design review: Activity and News pages #266.
• What counts as Activity is set by the stream definitions in Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265's README, approved in Approve the News and Activity stream definitions #272. The one change this project makes is to add updates to existing books, as a new book type (decided 2026-09-29, in Harden the Activity data contract before automatic merges #284). /feed.xml stays News-only (decided in Design review: Activity and News pages #266).
• Inside QuantEcon/reports-activity#91: the App is renamed before go-live, and book sites get the new book type. The website supports the type first, in Harden the Activity data contract before automatic merges #284 and Compute the Activity rows at build time, with tests #276–Add the "Latest activity" strip to the home page #279.
• The Activity RSS feed at /activity/feed.xml (decided in Design review: Activity and News pages #266) is filed as its own issue. The definition of done doesn't need it.
• News posts themselves, such as the French-edition announcement, are ordinary News work.

Sources

• The session's record: ~/work/quantecon/_reviews/_processed/2026-09-29-website-news-activity/ (local), taken at QuantEcon/website main 44a38e9, with Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265 at 44f5479.
• Design review: Activity and News pages #266: the round 1 brief and outcome, and the round 2 brief and outcome, which includes the handoff README. The Decisions table is in its description.
• Split updates into News and an Activity feed #265: the split, with John's comments and the set-and-forget note.
• QuantEcon/reports-activity#91: the reporter change, and its note on one entry per series per day.
• NEWS: move to a single weekly news post to reduce noise + only report changes to lectures and major software (QuantEcon.py, mystmd etc.) #225: where the problem was raised.