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Lab Stocktake — 2026-06-10

One-evening sweep of the lab in response to Mike's "let's get the lab all cleaned up, see what papers we have on deck." Companion to editorial-development-plan.md (refreshed the same evening — that file is the canonical per-issue plan).

The numbers

  • 80 workspaces in workspaces/.
  • 16 published articles on /articles (per web/src/data/features.ts).
  • ~55 workspaces have a compiled paper/paper.tex and a Complete/Revised status but never graduated to /articles. These live on /lab only.
  • 13 early workspaces have an index.md but no paper (pre-LaTeX-standard era).

Cleanup applied tonight

  1. Two workspaces were invisible on /lab because they had no workspace.json (the lab page filters on its presence). Backfilled both:
    • earthquake-lights-nuforc-usgs — a SHIPPED paper (the 104-year NUFORC × USGS cross-match, live at /articles/earthquake-lights-104-years) whose workspace card was missing from the lab entirely.
    • wspr-21year-census — the 11.53-billion-spot census that underpins every WSPR paper; complete with paper.tex and figures since April.
  2. docs/editorial-development-plan.md refreshed (was 2026-05-29):
    • Removed closed infra issues #195, #196.
    • Added #222 (Skinwalker), #224 (USGS backfill), #227 (TC monitor), #228 (GST monitor).
    • Corrected #199 (Sanriku paper SHIPPED — open only for Mike's sign-off), #201 (analysis done, never graduated), #202 (already ran, marked "run later" in error), #226 (largely overtaken by the 06-08 brand pivot).

Papers on deck (graduation candidates, ranked)

These are finished or near-finished analyses that could become /articles features with mostly writing work, no new heavy compute:

  1. Bz → Dst predictive lead time (#201, bz-dst-predictive-lead-time, Complete R1 2026-05-26). H1 confirmed at p ≈ 10⁻⁴²–10⁻⁴⁷ across all lags; H2 graduated under sensitivity. A positive result with an operational hook: a satellite a million miles upwind gives hours of storm warning. Cheapest ship on the board, and it would pair naturally with the GST monitor arc (#228) when that lands.
  2. Skinwalker v4 — season-matched baseline sensitivity (#222). The audience-proven franchise; v3 shipped 2026-05-29. Scoped as the highest-value next step in the project file; gated on Mike's call.
  3. North magnetic pole drift acceleration (#206 → DP-006 V2). The "Earth's compass is sprinting" hook, 8,374 catalog positions 1590–2024. Bright-line flag to resolve first: historical pole positions are derived from fitted field models (gufm1/IGRF), not direct measurement. Whether that counts as "processed measurement" (like Dst) or "model output" (out of bounds) is Mike's call before any queueing.
  4. Solar-wind → Kp storm-onset lag distribution (solar-wind-to-kp-..., Complete, April). 80-minute median lag, N in the tens of thousands of bins. Solid, headline-friendly ("how much warning do you actually get"), slightly overlapping #201 — could fold into the same feature.
  5. #199 Sanriku — already shipped; just needs Mike's sign-off to close.

Also noted: safecast-forbush-radiation-modulation (#202) is Complete but its headline is a structural negative (Safecast's station geography can't support the cutoff-rigidity test — 388 of 389 stations sit in one latitude band). Honest lab note; weak feature material. Recommend close-with-lab-link.

Not done tonight (visible, parked deliberately)

  • The ~13 paper-less early workspaces (aqi-weather-coupling, etc.) predate the LaTeX standard. Backfilling papers for them is a batch job for a slow day, not tonight.
  • /lab page redesign is #106, parked.
  • docs/brand-assets/ has untracked screenshot artifacts from the 06-08 brand shoot (_*.png, _*.html, _shoot.py). Git hygiene, separate decision.
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