The 860 Life — Connecticut events and things to do in the 860

Product backlog

Ideas we have agreed to explore but have not shipped yet. When work starts it moves to our dev changelog; when it ships it appears in release notes.

This sprint (2026-08) — issues, root causes, and fix plan

Research 2026-08-13/14. Alfred-prod was off ~24h then back (queue ~76). No site DB + crawl DB daily copy — one Neon production branch; protect www with cache, pool retry, and query hygiene.

Themes: (1) Reload errors = Neon pool `P2024` + `force-dynamic` weekly landings + `/report-bug` Prisma, not missing data. (2) Venue pipeline over-trusts scrape strings; Places often does not stamp out-of-860 towns so junk never hits Out of The 860 delete. (3) Hard delete + recrawl mints new slugs (Listing unavailable); bug heals FIFO behind source crawls; AXS error copy still mentions ScrapingAnt.

### P0 — Site reliability

  • Weekly Trivia/Sports (`force-dynamic` explore landings) + `/report-bug`: transient Prisma retry and soft-fail; drop blanket `force-dynamic` where tagged ~15m cache already exists.
  • Withdraw + recrawl (not hard delete + recrawl): keep `id`/`slug`/`externalId`; revive original row when found; hard-delete only tombstones still missing after a trusted recrawl.
  • Guard `/events/null` (128 dead-slug hits); do not record `null` as a slug.

### P0 — AXS / crawl failures

  • PeoplesBank: listing cards without parseable dates; stale “set SCRAPINGANT_API_KEY” copy. Prefer official arena feed; Alfred/Playwright error text; recrawl on Alfred.

### P0 — Admin

  • Events search: hydrate URL `q`; Prisma-paginated search (no unbounded in-memory load); align `sourceId` + `q`.
  • Venues tab: server page/cursor + slim columns; defer counts; unlinked index only when that filter is on.
  • Delete venue and linked events (typed confirm) for junk; recrawl-intent paths withdraw instead.

### P1 — Venue identity / NYC / enrich

  • Page-title chrome (`Home |`, Local Calendar); Places query `name, Connecticut` → address → town; Places/FS win identity.
  • Enrich stamps out-of-860 truth (NYC / `, NY` / coords) so rows enter Out of The 860 delete — never skip enrich to avoid writing NYC.
  • Dedup: require both towns or Places corroboration; do not merge disagreeing names on the same street unless campus.
  • Closed venue (Half Door): Places `business_status` / FS closed → stamp Location, withdraw future events, block re-bind.

### P1 — Bugs / Alfred / Facebook / hygiene

  • Promote bug-heal jobs to front; EVENT lane for short detail recrawls; promote already-queued source crawls.
  • Cannibals: family-merge prefixed aggregator titles (`TheaterWorks Hartford: The Cannibals…`) into occurrence family; revive/merge stale CTNow.
  • Social lane is used (9 completed Edge jobs Jul–Aug); verify session, no rewrite.
  • Sources filter: live events with zero images.
  • REMOVE stamped deploy hooks (cadence floor, town-mismatch, slug stubs, QC dismiss).

Venue Cleanup Part 2 items that overlap (Places/FS identity win, Local Calendar, merge children) are in this sprint. Gemini tiebreak / Key venue flag remain later unless already in-slice.

---

Next up — Venue Cleanup & Clarify (Part 2)

Admin light-touch + automation so junk and wrong-town Locations stop recurring. Do not add publisher/venue name lists; use structure + Places/Foursquare + Gemini only when ambiguous (`GOOGLEAI_API_KEY`).

### Implement order

1. COMPLETED parity — Admin venue cleanup treats all non-DELETED events equally (heal list/counts/relink/recrawl attribution); stop SCHEDULED-only laziness. 2. Local Calendar gap — Reject/heal `… Local Calendar` structural pattern; persist cleaned name on create; heal the 8 live junk Locations (Explorefarmington, Downtownmiddletown, etc.) via existing Heal publisher venues modal/apply (+ tests). 3. Enrich: Places/Foursquare win — Enrich with or without `websiteUrl`; always surface Places + Foursquare picks; Places/FS win identity (name/town/address/website); website optional for logo/copy. Empty state only when both miss — never “paste URL or cancel.” *(Town correction on enrich shipped via `resolveEnrichmentTown` — remaining is fuller Places/FS identity win + empty-state UX.)* 4. Gemini tiebreak — Same helper for publish bind + Enrich…; Gemini only when Places/FS ambiguous; Key freeze when `keyVenueAt` set (manual Enrich… Accept still allowed). 5. Merge alias survival — Soft-merge when matchKey/town differ (never hard-delete those losers); show merged children on keeper (“where did Hebron go?”); skip enrich on `mergedIntoId` children. *(LocationSlugAlias + stub purge deploy hook shipped — rename/merge hard-deletes no longer create `__slug_redirect__` Location rows.)* 6. Wrong-town clusters / Needs-attention — Same-name wrong-town clusters, Places miss, heal candidates → Needs-attention + Merge UX (children + Unmerge). *(One-shot SQL mismatch heal + enrich town correction shipped 2026-08-11 evening — do not rebuild as another full-catalog deploy scan.)* 7. Honest empty-delete count — COMPLETED: admin Total + “Delete all with no events (N)” use the same linked-event universe as `totalEventCountForLocation` (any region / INACTIVE), not in-region Live+Expired+Cancelled only. 8. Table / Edit / search identity — Same display identity in table and Edit; search against display label (Hawk Ridge “calendar” mismatch). 9. Key venue flag — `Location.keyVenueAt`; row + Edit toggle = freeze + content queue; filter Key · needs content (logo/hero/description/website); bind/enrich reason lines on Enrich preview + `ScrapeRun.warnings`.

### Done in this sprint (do not rebuild)

  • Bingo Loco bad cross-source attach + deploy unlink (promote 2026-07-24).
  • Venues table action-only badges (dropped Enriched / Auto-enriched / Scrape source / Has events listing).
  • Same-name + same-street wrong-town pairs surface in Venue Dedup review (Dunkin' Park).
  • Daily crawl floor + quiet-streak slowdown/speed-up + bi-weekly + Sources Frequency column / 4–6d tiers (2026-08-11 evening).
  • Venue enrich town from Places/postal (`resolveEnrichmentTown`) — street-name-as-town (2026-08-11 evening).
  • Targeted town-mismatch deploy heal — SQL mismatch rows only; stamp `venueTownPlacesRepairDeployAt` (2026-08-11 evening).
  • Admin Venues activity default All venues (2026-08-11 evening).
  • LocationSlugAlias + deploy clear of `__slug_redirect__` stubs (on `dev`; stamp `locationSlugRedirectStubsClearedAt`).
  • Honest venue Total / empty-delete — Total matches delete guard (`totalEventCountForLocation`).

### Explicitly out of this slice

  • Silent cross-town auto-merge without Places confidence
  • Durable merge audit table (light merged-children UI is in-slice)
  • Homepage Key prefer / Places-rich public `/venues` redesign (see Site / public)
  • Replacing Places with Gemini for every create/enrich
  • Full-catalog gazetteer sweeps in `prisma-post-db-push` (rejected — hung builds / Alfred sync)

---

Next sprint (after 2026-08 promote) — SEO / IndexNow

  • IndexNow URL cool-down ↳ shipped — Event/Location stamps + quiet deploy stamp ran on prod (`indexNowCatalogStampedAt` set). Hook removed from `prisma-post-db-push.mjs`. Optional later: drop stamp columns / delete `scripts/deploy-stamp-indexnow-catalog.ts` when convenient.
  • Bing traction follow-up — After cool-down is on prod: confirm sitemap index is still submitted in Webmaster Tools; spot-check URL Inspection on a few high-position keywords; do not keep hammering IndexNow hoping for impressions.

---

Deploy hygiene (operator)

After every Production promote is Ready:

1. Immediately — read the Vercel Production build log for each `deploy-*` / `prisma post-push` line, and confirm matching prod `PlatformSettings` stamps (or report still-null + remaining work). Do not treat “build green” as hook success. 2. When the next sprint starts — remove stamped hooks from `prisma-post-db-push.mjs` and clear the matching rows here. Leave unstamped hooks wired.

Current open:

1. Optional later (schema columns only): drop unused `PlatformSettings` one-shot stamps (`topPicksScoresDeployBackfillAt`, `eventInRegionDeployBackfillAt`, `scrapeCadenceRederiveDeployAt`, `scrapeCadenceDailyFloorDeployAt`, `venueTownPlacesRepairDeployAt`, `locationSlugRedirectStubsClearedAt`, `qcSweepBugReportsDismissedAt`, `venueAddressIdentityBackfillAt`, `publisherVenueHealDeployedAt`, `crawlQcRunPlansDeployedAt`, `playwrightFirstEvidenceUnlockedAt`, `venueChromeNameHealDeployAt`, `indexNowCatalogStampedAt`, `venuePublicSlugAlignDeployAt`, etc.) when convenient. 2. Belding Theater slug (manual): long name truncated at 80 chars blocked deploy stamp — operator fixing in prod admin. `scripts/deploy-align-venue-public-slugs.ts` unwired; optional manual run after rename if needed.

Do not leave “REMOVE after promote” hooks wired forever after they stamp. Do not ship one-off EventSource URL dedupe in deploy hooks — `syncEventSources` dedupes on publish. Do not reintroduce full-catalog town repair in post-db-push.

---

Account & engagement

  • User accounts — Optional login to persist saved events, home town / radius, and hearts across devices. On first sign-in, merge the anonymous `the860_harted` cookie into the account. Scope auth provider (magic link vs OAuth) when there is enough traction to justify it. *(Hearts ship cookie-only today.)*

---

Site / public

  • Venue detail page — Places-rich redesign ↳ partial — Event-detail layout + 860 Take / Good to know (`venueTips`) / From the source + prefiltered listing + Google rating/hours glance shipped (2026-08-12 draft). Remaining: parking/accessibility/dining highlights from snapshots, richer hero vs logo.
  • Venue image gallery (curated hero + logo) ↳ partial — unified missing-photo UX + Venue Hero / Venue Logo naming shipped. Remaining: optional gallery and admin upload; AI-assisted Venue Hero candidate picking is future work (current ranking is deterministic).
  • Homepage / listing Back restore ↳ partial — SSR near-you reuse + keep-alive `/events` + Back restore shipped (2026-07-23). Header Events forward nav starts at top (2026-07-24). Remaining: EventCard `prefetch={true}` site-wide; `/api/events/filters` on home mount; localStorage hydration second fetch when cookie ≠ storage.
  • Homepage / detail client bundle ↳ partial — `EventDescription` server-rendered and browse/home rows slimmed. Remaining: confirm event-detail client components don’t pull the scrape graph under webpack; keep scrape/server modules out of card UI; optional lazy `EventHartControl` on listing cards.
  • `/api/events` memory-pool row ceiling ↳ partial — Top Picks (including town/category/date/Near bbox/map) is DB `ORDER BY topPicksScore, startsAt`. Remaining: same discipline for `recommended` / `distance` memory pools; Top Picks still uses ≤`TOP_PICKS_CANDIDATE_CEILING` only for `q` / today / time-of-day memory passes.
  • Better “cool” scoring + discover more top events ↳ partial — Persisted coolness + admin pin/edit shipped. Remaining: scoring formula tweaks / surfacing more hidden gems.
  • SEO landing pages (phase 2) — More towns (Enfield, Torrington, Meriden, Simsbury, Wethersfield, Mystic/Essex) and seasonal copy; Search Console after index. *(Trivia Near Me v1 + filter UI shipped; Trivia + Live Sports weekly day-column calendars shipped. Venue sitemap + venue detail listing shipped on `dev`. IndexNow cool-down shipped on `dev` — see § Next sprint.)* Remaining after promote: Bing impressions follow-up.
  • Weekly calendar for more categories — The shared day-column surface (`weekly-category-calendar.ts` + `WeeklyCategoryListing`) now powers Trivia and Live Sports. Candidates next: karaoke and open mic (recurring weeknight patterns). Needs a support-line decision per category before adding.
  • Release note visitor-copy lint — Checklist in team-norms so “For visitors” passes [vision-and-brand.md](./vision-and-brand.md) before promote.
  • Security doc — Admin secret model and `/api/event-image` SSRF notes (held per owner request).

---

Scrape / data

  • Periodic missing-image review ↳ partial — Shipped: first missing photo → BugReport; later → soft flag; QC product defaults On via deploy hook on first prod promote. Remaining: broader offline gallery / Missing Image Heros pool (Admin / imagery).
  • Adaptive ingestion — run-plan learning ↳ partial — structured feeds, locks, learned caps, Needs run plan guidance shipped. Remaining: optional richer learning from crawl patterns, per-source “learning on event recrawl,” and a persisted admin checkbox (vs derived badge).
  • Facebook event sources ↳ partial — Shipped: tab outcome badges + auto-disable after repeated blocked/no-tab crawls; tiered cadence floors FB listings at weekly. Remaining: many FB listing URLs still return 0 extracted — structural listing strategy (or official API) needed before broad FB cadence; login/ToS limit browser depth.
  • Per-publisher crawl session — `ScrapeTarget.extraPrompt` + run-plan locks (not global env) for market cookies (AXS Hartford zip today), logged-in Facebook/Eventbrite as the860life, etc. AXS default zip lives in `SCRAPE_PIPELINE.axsDefaultZip` until per-source prose owns it.
  • Admin: unmerge / split Locations ↳ partial — Unmerge restores child + `preventAutoMerge`, relinks label-matching upcoming events, queues bounded source recrawls. Remaining: richer confirmation UI with event counts; optional `preventAutoMerge` on the winner when operators want both sides locked. *(Merge alias survival / where-did-it-go UI is in Venue Part 2.)*
  • Admin: location merge audit trail — Durable log table when venue sync auto-merges (out of Venue Part 2 slice; light merged-children UI is in Part 2).
  • Generalized co-production venue rules — Hartford.com co-presented shows beyond `co-production-venue.ts` unite/co-production copy parser.
  • OpenAI pipeline ordering UX — Long recrawls can show publish progress then “spacing OpenAI calls”; clarify or reorder so Jobs progress matches operator mental model. *(Bulk 860 Take throttle for >12 events ships; Gemini failover + durable TPM notes ship.)*
  • Alfred ingest API (optional) — If the browser worker splits off the HP machine, a small authenticated ingest endpoint for rendered HTML instead of shared DB queue drain only. ADR: [0007](./decisions/0007-playwright-oracle-vm.md); ops: [alfred-setup.md](./alfred-setup.md).
  • Accessibility-tree crawl extraction — After a listing loads in Playwright on Alfred, try accessibility snapshot alongside stripped HTML and JSON-LD when rendered HTML is unusable or extract count is zero.
  • Recrawl on empty-but-valid feeds ↳ partial — Trusted-empty withdraw for Facebook + trusted structured paths ships; generic HTML/AI zero-extract still skips reconcile (see [known-issues.md](./known-issues.md)). Remaining: clearer operator signal when a feed is valid but returns zero events.
  • RSS / feed auto-registration — Detect new CivicLift, ICS, and Tribe feeds during crawl and surface “add as source” in admin. CivicLift/CitySpark ingestion lock for existing sources ships in `structured-feed-lock.ts`.
  • E2E smoke (crawl) — One Preview crawl test against fixture HTML in CI.
  • Mobile event-page screenshot — Playwright phone-width capture when listing + `og:image` fail.
  • Concise crawled event titles (SEO) ↳ partial — sports strip + occurrence/date suffixes + redundant `at {venue}` strip + prefer shorter compatible titles on recrawl + concert title guidance shipped. Remaining: broader marketing-tagline shortening at extract for all publishers.
  • Refresh compact occurrence titles — Re-crawl recurring series for `Sun 5/8`-style titles (Tribe occurrence URLs help HJS but not all publishers).
  • Trivia image from social — Facebook/Instagram art before generated trivia cards.
  • Crawl cost dashboard — Admin view rolling up per-`ScrapeTarget` cost signals from `ScrapeRun` (pages fetched, detail skips, Alfred wall time, AI token usage). Sort by spend last 7d / 30d.
  • Missing-category crawl audit — Post-crawl or scheduled script listing drafts/events dropped for missing/invalid category after guidance + AI pass. Group by `ScrapeTarget` + extraction path.
  • Legacy rows missing externalId — audit prod before delete ↳ partial — Events admin can filter/select/delete missing-`externalId` rows. Remaining: read-only prod count/classify script for operator sign-off before bulk delete.
  • Listing-only crawl must always yield stable externalId ↳ partial — extract rejects missing id; finalize/publish block blank `externalId`. Remaining: ensure every listing-only path synthesizes a stable structural id when publisher omits one.

---

Crawl cadence & self-healing QC

Shipped (2026-07-17 promote): tiered cadence; no auto SCRAPE_RESET; Extra scrape prompt operator-edited; Jobs `EVENT_QC`; missing photo first → BugReport; live schema/ICS confirmation; QC + auto suggested recrawls On.

Shipped (2026-08-11 evening): daily auto floor; quiet-streak one-tier slowdown; quiet speed-up after zero prior while slowed (or monthly+); bi-weekly tier; Sources Frequency column; 4/5/6-day tiers.

↳ partial remaining: - Stale worker cancel thresholds — further tune Alfred hung-row cancel/re-enqueue if overlap still trips “no progress” in practice. - Periodic missing-image review gallery/backfill UX beyond `imageMissingFlaggedAt` (ties Admin / imagery).

---

Deployment / platform health

Baseline on `main`: [smoke-test.md](./smoke-test.md) (`verify:deployed:dev` / `:prod` / `verify:promote`), CI after prod→dev copy, [database-release-workflow.md](./database-release-workflow.md).

  • Public deployment status page — e.g. `/status` from `/api/health` (no secrets in UI).
  • Admin deployment status — e.g. `/admin/status` with schema parity, event counts, Actions links.
  • `GET /api/deploy-health` — One JSON payload for monitors and status UI.
  • External uptime monitoring — Document Better Stack / UptimeRobot polling www + dev health.

---

Admin / imagery

  • Category on uploaded hero ↳ partial — category mapping ships on Category Missing Images (multi-select). Remaining only if HP Hero Images themselves need category tags for homepage rotation (not requested).
  • Exclude from HP banner rotation — Per-image flag so a hero can serve missing-image fallbacks without entering the homepage banner carousel. *(Category Missing Images is now a separate pool — this flag may be obsolete.)*

---

Venue / admin guards

  • Venue create guard ↳ partial — admin Add venue + crawl ensure share `resolveVenueLocation` (admin-guard / ensure). Remaining: surface the existing row “open instead” UX polish if operators still get confused; complements Unmerge / Venue Part 2.

← Release notes