Add a scatter view (with GDP per capita on x) to existing OWID charts via the admin API, mirroring the admin UI's "Add scatter type" defaults, then retire the old standalone "X vs. GDP per capita" charts by redirecting their slugs to that scatter view. Trigger when the user pastes a table with columns `chart_admin_url`, `target_chart_admin_url`, `gdp_source` (part 1), or a list of `{grapher_url, target_chart_url}` pairs to redirect (part 2).
Installer avec Codex ou Claude Copiez ce prompt, collez-le dans Codex, Claude ou un autre assistant, puis laissez-le vérifier la page du skill et l'installer pour vous.
Une commande directe contourne le prompt de vérification. Examinez la source avant de l'exécuter.
Add a scatter view (with GDP per capita on x) to existing OWID charts via the admin API, mirroring the admin UI's "Add scatter type" defaults, then retire the old standalone "X vs. GDP per capita" charts by redirecting their slugs to that scatter view. Trigger when the user pastes a table with columns `chart_admin_url`, `target_chart_admin_url`, `gdp_source` (part 1), or a list of `{grapher_url, target_chart_url}` pairs to redirect (part 2).
metadata
{"internal":true}
add-gdp-scatter
Bulk-add a scatter view to a set of OWID charts, with the same defaults the admin UI's applyDefaultsForScatter applies — plus extra parity checks against a reference scatter chart.
When to invoke
The user pastes (TSV or CSV) a table like:
chart_admin_url target_chart_admin_url gdp_source
https://admin.owid.io/admin/charts/1035/edit https://admin.owid.io/admin/charts/7842/edit Maddison Project Database
https://admin.owid.io/admin/charts/6305/edit https://admin.owid.io/admin/charts/6918/edit World Bank
chart_admin_url — the existing reference scatter chart used as the source of parity hints (yAxis log, y display.name, color/size override, tolerance, exclusions).
target_chart_admin_url — the chart the user wants to gain a scatter view.
gdp_source — one of (case-insensitive, substring matches accepted):
World Bank / WDI → variableId 1294305 (WDI 2026-07-27)
Maddison / →
Maddison Project Database
900793
PWT / Penn World Table → 1108541
GDP_SOURCES in the script is the authority on these ids; the WDI one goes stale on every WDI update — see the version check below.
The admin host that gets written to is OWID_ENV.admin_api, which auto-resolves to staging-site-<branch> on a feature branch. Confirm the branch before running.
Pre-flight: GDP version check
Before processing any rows, the script queries variables for the latest id matching each canonical GDP-per-capita catalogPath pattern (worldbank_wdi/.../ny_gdp_pcap_pp_kd, ggdc/.../maddison_project_database#gdp_per_capita, ggdc/.../penn_world_table#rgdpo_pc). If the latest id differs from the one hardcoded in GDP_SOURCES, a WARN is printed at the top of stdout with the newer id and catalogPath. The script does NOT auto-switch — update GDP_SOURCES (and the feedback_scatter_gdp_picker memory) deliberately if the new version is the one we want.
Read that WARN before the run, not after. These ids go stale on every WDI update, and the "target already has x → leave it" guard means a re-run will not repair a target that already received the stale variable — the x dimension has to be rewritten directly, chart by chart. Cross-check against the id the source scatters actually plot: if the sources are on a newer version than GDP_SOURCES, the newer one is what you want, and bumping first saves a repair pass. (2026-08-04: every source plotted WDI 2026-07-27 1294305 while the script was still pinned to 2026-02-27 1204826.)
What the script does (per row)
Mirrors the admin's applyDefaultsForScatter and the extra moves we agreed on:
Adds ScatterPlot to chartTypes, preserving existing tabs. Seeds the schema default [LineChart, DiscreteBar] when chartTypes is unset.
Appends x (the chosen GDP variable), color, size dimensions if absent.
color: if the source uses a non-default color variable (e.g. World Bank income groups), mirror it; otherwise use CONTINENTS_ID=900801.
size: the rule is always use the default Population indicator (POPULATION_ID=953899) for any population-type size. If the source sizes by any population variant (regular, historical, WPP, …), the target gets the default Population. A genuinely non-population size (e.g. GDP, area) is mirrored as-is but raises a WARN so the bubble sizing gets a manual review. If the source has no size dim at all, the target also gets none — the script won't add sizing the curator deliberately omitted. Population variants are detected by the variable's name starting with "Population" or its catalogPath living under a /population/ dataset; the action note records any normalization.
Sets matchingEntitiesOnly: true.
Sets xAxis to scaleType: log + canChangeScaleType: true.
Y-axis log toggle (not forced): when the source scatter is scaleType: log, only enable the toggle (canChangeScaleType: true) and leave the default linear. yAxis is shared across all views, so forcing log would flip the line/bar views too. Mirrors explicit yAxis min/max bounds the source sets (each bound copied independently) — except a non-zero min is NOT mirrored when the target has a Marimekko or Stacked* view, because those draw from a baseline and a scatter-tuned non-zero min would make them start above zero (misleading). DiscreteBar is not in that set: DiscreteBarChart.yAxisConfig hardcodes min: undefined and anchors at zero, so it ignores yAxis.min outright — withholding the min from a DiscreteBar target protects nothing and costs the scatter a well-fitted axis. A degenerate min: 0 + max: 0 (collapsed axis) has its max stripped. Note: y-axis bounds affect all views, not just scatter.
On y-axis bounds, prefer removing to pinning.Axis.updateDomainPreservingUserSettings takes min(config.min, data.min) and max(config.max, data.max), so an authored min is a hard floor across every view — which is why {min: 0, max: 0} renders identically to {min: 0} (the data max always wins) and is not the inert junk it looks like. When a reviewer says the scatter's axis is wasting space at zero, dropping min usually beats mirroring the source's: each view then fits its own data, and mirroring a non-zero min can clip a LineChart whose series run below it. (2026-08-04, chart 2201: source min was 5, but the line data reaches 0.92; dropping min gave the scatter 6.94–13.97 while the line chart moved only 0 → 0.92, and the DiscreteBar was unaffected either way.)
The scatter's single-year default needs no config (usually)
A recurring question: the scatter should show only the latest year, without affecting the other views — is that possible?Yes, and Grapher already does it — do not set minTime/maxTime for this.
minTime/maxTime are global. Only the map has its own time (map.time / map.startTime in MapConfigInterface); there is no per-chart-type time override, so pinning them to the latest year would collapse a LineChart to a single point.
Grapher handles it at runtime instead. checkSingleTimeSelectionPreferred returns true for the ScatterPlot tab whenever the scatter is not the primary chart type and the chart is not in relative mode, and adjustStateForTab → ensureTimeHandlesAreSensibleForTab then collapses both time handles onto the end (latest) time. That is runtime state, so the line/bar/map views keep their full range. Since the applier appendsScatterPlot, it is never chartTypes[0] and the condition holds by construction.
But it only fires when the reader CLICKS the tab — see the shared caveat below.
Also: hideTimeline: true breaks it even on a tab click. With a hidden timeline, timelineHandleTimeBounds reads the authoredminTime/maxTime on every chart tab and ignores the runtime handles, so the collapse never takes effect — and the reader has no slider to fix it. Authored minTime == maxTime is then the only fix, and it is only safe when every other tab is single-time anyway (DiscreteBar/StackedDiscreteBar/Marimekko). With a LineChart, SlopeChart or single-indicator Dumbbell in the mix, one global time cannot serve both — un-hide the timeline or accept the range. The script emits a WARN for each case. (2026-08-04: chart 1253, DiscreteBar + hideTimeline, needed minTime/maxTime = latest; the other 16 targets in that batch needed nothing.)
adjustStateForTab fires on a tab CLICK only — not on a direct URL load
Both scatter adjustments — collapsing the time handles and clearing the entity selection — live in the same function behind the same guard:
if (!this.isEditor) {
this.ensureEntitySelectionIsSensibleForTab(tab)
this.ensureTimeHandlesAreSensibleForTab(tab)
}
So they always happen together, or not at all. adjustStateForTab has exactly one production caller, onTabChange, which in turn has exactly one: the ContentSwitchers tab control. A tab supplied in the URL takes a different path — populateFromQueryParams → setTab, which only assigns this.tab. Three consequences:
Clicking the scatter tab: time collapses to the latest year and the selection is cleared. The scatter matches the old standalone chart.
Landing directly on ?tab=scatter: neither happens. The scatter opens on the authored time range with the authored entities highlighted — unless the URL says otherwise. This is the path Part 2's redirect uses, which is why every part of its stored tab=scatter&time=latest&country= is load-bearing: each param hand-supplies one adjustment the click would have made. time=latest stands in for ensureTimeHandlesAreSensibleForTab, and country= (present, empty) for ensureEntitySelectionIsSensibleForTab — parseCountryParam returns valid([]) for an empty value and setSelectedEntities([]) clears, so the scatter shows every entity unhighlighted. Whenever a new tab-click adjustment is added upstream, a matching param has to be added here or the two paths drift apart again. country= has not yet been exercised through a live redirect — confirm in a browser on the first --apply run (see "Verifying Part 2").
The admin editor shows neither, because of the isEditor guard — deliberate, so switching tabs cannot mutate the authored config on save (grapher #6794). A scatter that looks wrong in /admin/charts/<id>/edit may be fine for readers. Verify on the chart page.
The target's entity selection highlights the scatter, it does not filter it
Targets normally carry a selectedEntityNames list for their line/bar view (4–20 entities is typical) while the source scatters carry none — they show every country. That asymmetry does not hide data on the new scatter view:
ScatterPlotChartState.seriesNamesToHighlight uses the selection to highlight only; every entity is still plotted.
Axis domains narrow to the selection only via pointsForAxisDomains, and only when zoomToSelection is set. Check that field — with it, a scatter's axes really would zoom to the highlighted subset.
On a tab click, ensureEntitySelectionIsSensibleForTab clears the selection entirely (CHART_TYPES_THAT_SHOW_ALL_ENTITIES is [ScatterPlot, Marimekko]) so long as it is still the authored one — the scatter then looks exactly like the old standalone chart. On a direct URL load it does not, for the reason in the section above; the authored entities render highlighted.
That second case is what Part 2's redirect produces, so a reader arriving by a retired scatter's URL sees the same data and axes but with a few countries emphasized — visually unlike the chart they used to get, and unlike what a reader who clicks the tab gets. Decide per batch whether that is acceptable, and see the country= note above for the fix.
Cross-view safety (which fields are global)
yAxis (scaleType, min, max) is the only config the skill writes that meaningfully bleeds into the non-scatter views — hence the log-toggle and zero-baseline handling above. The others were checked and are safe: xAxis.scaleType: log is ignored by Line/DiscreteBar (they hardcode a linear time axis) and has no visible effect on Slope; the color dimension does not recolor line/bar (they color by entity); size is scatter-only (not even in the table tab); matchingEntitiesOnly is honored only by Scatter and Marimekko.
6. Mirrors source's manually-set y display.name when present.
6b. Mirrors source comparisonLines when the target has none. A scatter's reference line (e.g. yEquals: 1 on a ratio-to-a-benchmark indicator) is often the whole point of its framing, so dropping it makes the migrated view say less than the chart it replaces. Never overwrites an existing set.
7. Emits warnings (no action) for:
Target has no selectedEntityNames — line/bar/slope views will fall back to Grapher defaults.
Target stackMode: relative — on scatter this is the "Display average annual change" mode; we want the toggle available but off by default, so a relative default is flagged for review.
Source excludedEntityNames — never applied to the target (they would hide the entity from all views, not just the scatter), so each one reappears on the migrated scatter. Graded per entity by classify_exclusions into y-OUTLIER / aggregate / high-GDP-material / unclear / ungradeable (a decision is needed) vs high-GDP / no data (benign), with the numbers in the EXCLUDED ENTITIES table. Only the first group makes the note a WARN — the group isEXCLUSION_WARN_CLASSES, which the table's own footer prints, so the two cannot drift. Note that a high GDP per capita is benign only while it stays inside X_MATERIAL_DECADES; past that it grades high-GDP-material and warns like the rest.
Source y axis is log — the target's scatter tab opens linear, and only a URL carrying yScale=log restores it. See "A log y axis and an exclusion list are the two things the migration cannot carry".
GDP coverage mismatch — if y-indicator's earliest year predates the chosen GDP's coverage (WDI≈1990, PWT≈1950, Maddison≈year 1), suggest a deeper-history alternative.
Few entities on default scatter view — counts entities with both a y- and an x-value within tolerance at the default time; if fewer than ~15 AND source uses higher tolerance, recommends bumping target's y display.tolerance.
A log y axis and an exclusion list are the two things the migration cannot carry
Everything else on the source is either mirrored onto the target or left behind for a reason that
holds. These two are different — they are lost, and the only channel that gives either back is
a query string:
A log y axis stays behind because yAxis is global (step 5). Part 2's redirect and a
hand-updated article link carry yScale=log; a reader who clicks the scatter tab does not,
and neither does any surface that has no URL of its own.
excludedEntityNames is never applied to the target (exclusions are global too, so they
would hide the entity from its line/bar/map views), so every excluded entity reappears on
the migrated scatter. Nothing, anywhere, puts it back.
The surfaces with no query string are what decide whether the retirement is worth doing, and
there are three:
a key-chart slot has nowhere to put one — GdocPost.loadRelatedCharts selects only
chartId, slug, title, variantName, keyChartLevel, and RelatedCharts renders
<GrapherWithFallback slug={activeChartSlug}>;
a gdoc embed resolves the chart itself and renders its default tab
(makeGrapherLinkedChart builds no query string);
a featured metric is worse still: it names a chart, an MDIM view or an explorer view and
never a chart's tab, so the scatter view cannot be featured at all (see "Featured metrics").
On a featured or embedded source, a log axis is therefore gone for good and no amount of
re-pointing recovers it. That is what makes "is this migration worth doing?" a real question
rather than a formality, and why the answer depends on how the old chart is referenced.
Leaving the standalone chart alone is a legitimate outcome. The skill reports the loss and
the topic owner decides: the applier WARNs on a log source, the reviewer HTML asks the question
with both shapes side by side, and Part 2's audit prints a RECONSIDER block weighing the loss
against the blast radius. None of them blocks — see "RECONSIDER" in Part 2 for why not.
Exclusions are graded, not listed, because the two usual reasons for one have opposite
consequences here. The target's x axis is log, so a very high GDP per capita — the classic
Ireland / Luxembourg / Qatar exclusion — costs almost nothing: on chart 6305, Ireland's $131,338
against a pack topping out at $95,173 is +0.14 of a decade of extra axis width, i.e.
invisible — though "benign" there is a claim about the axis, and the note says so: a very high
GDP per capita can also be excluded because the figure itself is distorted (Ireland's profit
shifting, a Gulf state's expat denominator), which a log axis does not fix. A y outlier is the
opposite: on chart 5029, Australia's 3,243 ha average farm size
against a pack of 0.35–582.5 stretches the y axis 5.6x, and yAxis.max is global so the
scatter cannot cap it alone. That is why grade_exclusion measures each axis in the units it is
drawn in rather than testing for statistical outlierness — a symmetric IQR fence gets skewed
indicators badly wrong (chart 1131: Cape Verde's 40.3 kg/ha cereal yield sits well inside a
±3·IQR fence while being 14.3x below the lowest of the other 88 countries).
The two pack tests (Y_PACK_FACTOR, "N× above the highest / below the lowest") are ratios, so
they only run against a positive bound. On an indicator whose values are negative, hi_y × 2 sits
below the pack, which would make an ordinary in-range value read as an outlier, and a pack
topping out at exactly 0 would divide by zero. Those indicators are graded on the span stretch
alone, which is sign-agnostic and still catches a genuine outlier.
One case needs its own test rather than a ratio: an excluded value at or below zero while
every peer is positive. That is the limiting case of "below the lowest" — infinitely far below —
so no ratio expresses it, and the span stretch does not cover it either, because a broad pack
absorbs the extra width (y=0 against a pack of 1–100 stretches the axis only 1.01×). It is graded
y-OUTLIER on the sign alone. This matters because the pack tests, not the stretch, are what catch
this whole shape of case: chart 1131's Cape Verde is caught by "below the lowest" alone, its stretch
being just 1.04×.
Both sides of that comparison are read at the same year. An entity with no value at the
target's default year is graded at its latest year with both indicators instead, and the peer
pack is rebuilt at that year rather than held at the default one — otherwise a trending
indicator has the point and the pack drifting apart, and the verdict measures the trend rather
than the entity. The measured year is printed whenever it is not the default.
That fallback year honours the target's tolerance, and is not a raw-year intersection: at a
non-zero tolerance Grapher pairs a y value with a GDP value from a neighbouring year, so an entity
whose two observations never share a year can still be a point the reader meets by dragging the
timeline. Requiring the same year graded it a benign no data and dropped it out of the warning
altogether. The value is then read back at that same tolerance, since the observation itself may
sit a year or two off the timeline year it was found under.
The candidates for that year are every year the two variables cover, not just the entity's own
observation years, because the year that pairs them can be one where the entity has neither: y in
2000 and GDP in 2002 at tolerance 1 meet at 2001, a year on the timeline because other entities
have data there and a year the reader reaches by dragging the handle. Searching only the entity's
own years missed it and sent the entity back as a benign no data.
no data is also checked before the OWID_ code, so an excluded aggregate that has no
pairable year is no data rather than aggregate. The aggregate note claims the entity "renders
as one point among the countries"; an entity with no pair renders nowhere, since
matchingEntitiesOnly hides it. Testing the code first raised a warning — and a RECONSIDER row —
on the strength of a sentence that was not true of that entity.
(2026-08-19, production: of 22 published GDP scatters carrying excludedEntityNames, 8 exclude
World or another OWID aggregate — the single commonest case, which is why aggregate is its
own class, detected by the OWID_ prefix on entityCode rather than by a name list. Charts 1131
and 5029, both of which exclude a genuine y outlier, are also key charts on their topic pages
— the compound case where the loss lands where no query string reaches.)
Run this as a checklist in the chat
Create a TodoWrite list covering the WHOLE migration on the first step, before touching anything — not just the part being worked on now. This migration's failure mode is not getting a step wrong, it is losing a step: the work spans two scripts, a human review round, a merge, and a production run, with days between them. Anything not on the list from the start gets discovered later by a reader hitting a 404 or an article rendering the wrong tab.
So the reference sweep and Part 2 go on the list as pending from the very beginning, even when the request is only "add the scatter views". They are the two that get forgotten, and they are the two that break things for readers.
The canonical items, in order:
Confirm the branch / which admin host OWID_ENV resolves to (on master that is production).
Pre-flight every row (preflight_targets.py); report and drop the blocked ones.
Act on the GDP version WARN — bump GDP_SOURCESbefore applying if the sources plot a newer id.
Apply (apply_scatter_defaults.py).
Verify every target: ScatterPlot present, log x-axis, and the current GDP id on x.
Display-name follow-up — after the final applier run, or the next run re-mirrors it.
Build the review HTML (build_review.py) and hand it to the topic owner.
Apply the reviewer's flagged notes; regenerate the HTML and re-import their JSON.
Chart-diff sign-off on staging, then merge.
Confirm the scatter views actually reached production. A merged PR is not evidence that they did: chart-sync only carries chart edits whose diffs were approved in Chart Diff, so a PR can merge green with every row ✅ on staging and leave production untouched. An abandoned first attempt (PR #6173, merged 2026-06-24) left production untouched on all seven of its pairs — deliberately: the target_query_param needed for Part 2 did not exist yet, so it was dropped and the migration restarted from scratch rather than left half-done. Whatever the reason, check production directly rather than inferring it from the merge.
Reference sweep on the old charts — find-chart-references over each source slug and its aliases, then scripts/build_reference_handoff.py to turn it into the handoff (it keeps the sweep's 📄 doc / 👁 preview / 🔗 page links and its "Find in the doc" search string — see below). Re-point embeds and links at the target's scatter view before retiring anything: an embed is never fixed by a redirect, and a link that works only via a 301 outlives everyone's memory of why. Do not skip this because the Part 2 audit reports few references — it counts a narrower set; see the key-chart and featured-metric traps below. Settle the ⭐ featured-metric rows in the same pass: they are the only ones that cannot be repaired after the unpublish.
Narrative charts on the sources: replace where the parent is being retired (create → re-point articles → delete; never delete first).
Part 2 audit — redirect_to_scatter.py with no --apply. Read every verdict, and resolve every RECONSIDER row with the topic owner before item 14. That block is the one verdict here that does not block on its own (a lossy retirement is an editorial call, not a broken page), so it is the one that gets applied past if nobody answers it.
Part 2 --apply on staging, then the browser checks in "Verifying Part 2".
Part 2 --apply --allow-production once the scatter views are live on production, then the same checks against the live site.
Keep the list alive across turns: carry the untouched items forward rather than reporting only the delta, and say when one clears. Items 11–15 stay visible as pending the entire time Part 1 is being worked on.
Workflow
Parse the pasted table into a JSON list, one object per row with keys chart_admin_url, target_chart_admin_url, gdp_source. Strip the header. Accept tab- or comma- separated.
Pre-flight every row before writing anything with scripts/preflight_targets.py. The applier does not validate that a target can take a scatter view — it returns OK on rows that change nothing useful — so this check has to happen first:
It reads each target's production config (the state a staging DB was cloned from, so the baseline holds even if an earlier run already touched staging) and checks the four conditions from "Picking targets": published, not already a ScatterPlot, not stacked-family, exactly one y dimension, and that y is the source's non-GDP indicator. Report the blocked rows to the user and drop them. Add --emit to pipe the runnable subset straight into the applier:
EXCLUDED ENTITIES — one row per entity the source excluded, with its class and the measurement behind it. Printed only when some source has exclusions. The notes column is one joined line, so this is where the evidence for "this entity's return is a defect" lives.
Y-DIM DISPLAY NAMES — chart, varId, manual display.name (on chart), ETL display.name (from variables.display), catalog variable.name. Only populated for OK rows.
Show all three tables to the user verbatim (or formatted as markdown).
Follow up on display names — and do it LAST. Where a target ended up with a manual display.name but the ETL variable already defines a reasonable one (or variable.name is clean), use AskUserQuestion to let the user pick which manual overrides to drop. Then run a small inline Python block to delete the name key from display on each chosen chart (preserving unit/shortUnit/etc.), via the same AdminAPI.update_chart flow.
A later applier run silently undoes this. Step 3 mirrors the source's manual y display.name onto the target whenever the two differ, so any name that came from the source is re-applied by the next run — the "idempotent re-run" verification in "Verifying after a run" will quietly revert the decision. Do this step after the final applier run, and if you must re-run afterwards, re-apply the drops. Check the run notes to tell the two cases apart: a y.display.name: None → '…' note means the applier added it from the source (it will come back), while a name that appears in the Y-DIM table with no such note was already on the target (it will not).
Watch for the reverse case too: a target with no manual name falls back to the ETL display.name, which can be a bare dimension label like "Mean" — fine on a line chart next to its title, but an unlabeled-looking axis on the scatter. Offer to set one.
Edge cases
Stacked-family chartTypes (StackedArea / StackedBar / StackedDiscreteBar) without any line-family entry → SKIPPED. The user must redesign the chart manually. (Example from session: chart 3547.)
Target already has x/color/size → leave it, like the admin's if (!hasX) does. The script will not overwrite an existing dimension.
Target is itself already a ScatterPlot → the row is worthless and can be actively harmful, so screen these out of the input before running. A chart config holds exactly one x dimension, so a chart already scattering against some other variable can never also plot GDP: the guard above leaves x alone, the row still reports OK, and no GDP dimension is added. Worse, if the target's y differs from the source's, step 7 stamps the source's y display.name onto a different indicator. This is not a status the script reports — verify it yourself.
Picking targets
A valid target is a published, non-scatter, single-y-indicator chart that plots the source scatter's non-GDP indicator on its y axis. When a target list is generated by query, all four conditions have to be filters, or the list quietly fills with rows that cannot work:
on y, not just present — matching the indicator anywhere in the target's dimensions pulls in scatter twins where it is the x (e.g. cereal-yield-vs-extreme-poverty-scatter instead of cereal-yield-vs-extreme-poverty).
not a ScatterPlot — see the edge case above.
not stacked-family — the script SKIPPEDs those.
exactly one y indicator — a scatter plots one y series, so a multi-series line/bar chart is ambiguous (an 11- or 22-series cause-of-death chart is a nonsense target). In prod_semantic, is_single_indicator is exactly COUNT(DISTINCT y indicator) = 1, verified with zero disagreements.
Two things to expect from a correctly filtered list: fewer rows, and some sources with no target at all — that is the honest answer when the indicator is only ever plotted by scatters, and it is better than a fallback. Also beware coalesce(type, 'LineChart'): type is NULL for the charts that never set chartTypes, so a bare type != 'ScatterPlot' evaluates to NULL and silently drops exactly the plain line charts that make the best targets.
scripts/find_targets.sql is a worked query over the analytics semantic layer that applies all of the above and returns one row per published GDP scatter, with its target (or NULL). Run it in Metabase, or from here:
.venv/bin/python -c "
from etl.analytics.data import read_analytics
print(read_analytics(open('.claude/skills/add-gdp-scatter/scripts/find_targets.sql').read()).to_csv(index=False))"
It uses /* */ comments deliberately: read_analytics flattens the SQL onto one line, where a -- comment would swallow the rest of the query and fail with a misleading Unexpected end of statement. As of 2026-08-04 it returns 167 GDP scatters — 124 with a target, 43 without.
Source has excludedEntityNames → warning only, and graded: exclusions on the target would also hide those entities from line/bar/map views, which is rarely intended, so each excluded entity comes back on the scatter and the skill says whether that matters.
Source y axis is log → warning only; the target keeps a linear default, because yAxis is global.
GDP coverage mismatch → warning only; the user picks per chart whether to switch sources.
Sparse scatter view → warning only; tolerance affects all views, not just scatter.
What this skill explicitly does NOT do
Does not add the canonical GDP footnote (note: "GDP per capita is expressed in [international-$]…"). Request separately if you want it.
Does not apply source excludedEntityNames.
Does not adjust selectedEntityNames, originUrl, subtitle, title, or note.
Does not push to production — only to whatever environment OWID_ENV resolves to.
Hard rule: never migrate GDP-per-capita text
The source charts are scatter-vs-GDP charts, so their title/subtitle/footnote describe the GDP relationship ("… vs. GDP per capita", "GDP per capita is adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries", etc.). The target's primary view is not the scatter, so that framing does not belong on it. Whenever porting any text from a source chart to a target (title, subtitle, footnote, display name), strip every GDP-per-capita clause first — the "vs. GDP per capita" phrasing and the inflation/living-costs boilerplate tail. Port only the part describing the target's own indicator.
Reviewing the migration side-by-side
scripts/build_review.py renders a self-contained HTML for stepping through each pair — the old standalone scatter on the left, the scatter view the target gained on the right — with approve / flag / note per row. Decisions persist in localStorage, mirror to a JSON on disk (Chrome/Edge), and import back. Same shape as map-charts-to-mdim/scripts/build_review.py; it takes the applier's own JSON on stdin, so the reviewed set is exactly the applied set:
What it adds over the mdim reviewer, because the asymmetry here is different: on the left the scatter was the whole chart, on the right it is one tab among several. So every row makes the target's secondary status explicit — a SECONDARY · tab N of M · opens on <tab> badge, and the full tab list as chips with ★ on the tab readers actually land on and the scatter highlighted. Watch for a default of Map or Table: grapher adds those outside chartTypes, so readers may not land on a chart tab at all.
The right pane toggles (or press v) between the two states a URL can produce:
Redirect view — ?tab=scatter&time=latest&country=, exactly what a reader following the retired slug gets, &yScale=log included on a log row. The query comes from redirect_to_scatter.row_query, the function that writes it, rather than a constant of its own — one part of it is per-row, so a local copy would put a view nobody gets in front of the reviewer.
Default view — what a reader opening the target sees first.
The third state — after a reader clicks the scatter tab — no URL can reproduce (see "adjustStateForTab fires on a tab CLICK only"). Open the Default view and click the scatter tab inside the frame: it should match the Redirect view. That comparison is the practical check that the redirect's time=/country= params really stand in for the click, which is the one thing about Part 2 that has never been verified live. On a log row the two differ by design — the click leaves the target's linear yAxis alone while the redirect forces log — so the pane's own hint says so rather than letting a correct row read as a defect.
Per-row flags are split so the "With warnings" filter stays worth using. Warnings are possible defects — no ScatterPlot tab, scatter as the primary type, hideTimeline with a time range, stackMode: relative, an exclusion whose return actually changes the chart, and the log-axis question. Context is expected-but-needed-to-read-the-panes, e.g. that the target selects N entities which both routes should clear — so if you do see highlighting, one of the two mechanisms failed. Keep new checks on the right side of that line; a warning on every row is the same as no warnings.
The two lossy checks are the reason that split has to be computed rather than assumed. A log source produces both: a context line (the two panes differ by design — see below) and a warning (whether a linear scatter still shows the relationship the author chose log for). That is a judgment nobody else in the workflow makes, and the reviewer is the only person looking at both shapes at once. Exclusions are graded by the applier's classify_exclusions, and the classes decide the box: every class in EXCLUSION_WARN_CLASSES (y-OUTLIER, aggregate, high-GDP-material, unclear, ungradeable) is a warning carrying its measurement, while a benign high-GDP or no data is context ("back on the scatter, but harmless"). Importing the applier's EXCLUSION_WARN_CLASSES rather than re-deriving the split is what keeps the reviewer saying the same thing the applier's run said.
Decisions are fingerprinted on both configs' configMd5 plus the GDP variable id, so a re-run of the applier (which rewrites the target) invalidates stale approvals instead of silently keeping them.
After fixing a flagged chart, the reviewer has to reload. The panes are iframes and are only re-pointed when their URL changes, so a config edit made on staging is invisible behind the browser cache — a reviewer checking their own fix sees the old chart and reasonably concludes nothing happened. Press r / hit ↻ Reload frames to force a refetch. Regenerating the HTML is also worth doing after a round of fixes, because it refreshes the configMd5 fingerprints: import the reviewer's exported JSON into the new file and exactly the rows whose config changed come back as to review, while every untouched decision carries over.
Verifying after a run
Open OWID_ENV.chart_site(slug) for one of the targets and switch to the Scatter tab.
Re-run the same input. The script is idempotent — all changes are guarded by "if absent" / "if not equal" checks; a second run should print OK with empty / minimal notes.
Confirm every target got the current GDP id on x (GDP_SOURCES), not a stale one carried over from an earlier run.
An admin write drops an empty colorScale, which chart-diff then reports
configs_are_equal compares the whole config minus id, isPublished, bakedGrapherURL, adminBaseUrl, dataApiUrl and version — so colorScale is compared. The admin API normalizes an empty colorScale: {} to null and drops the key on any write, and pushing {} back does not stick (verified — it re-normalizes). A target whose production config has colorScale: {} therefore shows an extra "colorScale removed" line in its chart-diff forever after being touched.
Two consequences worth knowing before someone reports it as a bug:
It is cosmetic. Nothing renders differently, and colorScale with real content is preserved — e.g. customHiddenCategories survived intact on a Marimekko target.
Reverting a chart on staging does not remove it from chart-diff. The revert is itself an admin write, so a chart restored to its exact production config still appears, differing only by the dropped colorScale. If a reverted chart shows up with no visible change, this is why — check colorScale before hunting for a real difference.
Part 2: retire the old standalone scatter charts
Once the targets have their scatter view, each old standalone "X vs. GDP per capita" chart is retired by registering its slug as a chart redirect on the target chart carrying ?tab=scatter&time=latest&country=, then unpublishing it. Use scripts/redirect_to_scatter.py.
That is the same thing as opening the target chart's admin editor, going to Refs → "Alternative URLs for this chart", and filling in both fields: the old slug under URL, and tab=scatter&time=latest&country= under Target query params (optional). That second field is new (grapher #6674, Jul 2026) and is what makes this possible — before it, chart_slug_redirects could only map slug → chart id, so this skill had to use the site redirects table instead.
Input: JSON list of {grapher_url, target_chart_url} (public ourworldindata.org/grapher/<slug> URLs).
# Audit only (default) — a full dry run: references, article follow-ups, and the verdict for
# every row, mutating nothing:
echo '<JSON>' | .venv/bin/python .claude/skills/add-gdp-scatter/scripts/redirect_to_scatter.py
# Apply — create the redirects, re-point the sources' own old slugs, unpublish the sources:
echo '<JSON>' | .venv/bin/python .claude/skills/add-gdp-scatter/scripts/redirect_to_scatter.py --apply
Other flags: --skip-alias-repoint (leave the sources' own old slugs alone — they are still audited, and any source that still has one is BLOCKED, because the unpublish would delete it), --allow-manual-refs (apply a row whose source an explorer / data insight / static viz references — only once those are re-pointed), --allow-production (required to --apply when OWID_ENV resolves to production, which it does on master).
Pre-checks
All read-only, so the audit reports the verdict --apply will act on:
verdict
meaning
CREATE / UPDATE
ready. UPDATE = a redirect for this slug exists with the wrong query params
EXISTS
redirect already correct — the alias re-point and the unpublish still run
SKIPPED
source == target, or the target has no ScatterPlot tab / isn't published. This is the wrong-staging-server detector, and what protects charts we couldn't generate a scatter for (e.g. StackedArea)
CHAINED
the target's slug is itself redirected away (chart, site or mdim redirect), or another row in the same batch retires it. The in-batch case is the worse one: retiring the target unpublishes it, which deletes every redirect pointing at it — including the one that row just created — leaving that source unpublished with no redirect at all
CONFLICT
the source slug is already claimed — by a chart redirect to a different chart, or by a multi_dim_redirects row, which wins over chart redirects (the mdim map is merged second in _grapherRedirects.json)
SITE_EXISTS
a site redirect already serves this source. It bakes as a static 301 matched before the grapher route runs, so ours would be dead weight — delete it first if you want the chart redirect's param merging
BLOCKED
Two causes. (a) The source is referenced by an explorer / data insight / static viz — those embed its config, so no redirect covers them and the unpublish would break them; re-point them, then pass --allow-manual-refs. (b) --skip-alias-repoint on a source that still has old slugs of its own: the unpublish deletes every redirect pointing at the source, so sparing them means not unpublishing. Move them by hand, or drop the flag
References audit of the OLD chart
get_chart_references counts (wp/gdoc/expl/narr/ins/sviz), flagging MANUAL when explorers / dataInsights / staticViz is non-zero — a redirect alone does not fix those (they embed the old chart's config directly). Those rows are turned into BLOCKEDbefore the apply loop runs, so --apply cannot unpublish them: the loop gates purely on status, and leaving a MANUAL row at CREATE meant the audit flagged the breakage and then caused it anyway. Re-point the dependents, then re-run with --allow-manual-refs.
Two columns come from outside get_chart_references, because it cannot see either:
keych — key-chart slots, from chart_tags directly (key_chart_slots). See "Key-chart slots" below.
lossy — whether the migrated scatter will look like the chart it replaces, from source_lossiness plus the applier's exclusion grading. Detailed in the RECONSIDER block, which also counts featured-metric slots (featured_metric_slots, via the sweep's own reader).
Plus a table of article references that need a hand edit, from posts_gdocs_links:
an embed (any componentType that isn't span-*) resolves to the target chart but renders the target's default tab — makeGrapherLinkedChart builds its URL without a query string, so tab=scatter never reaches it;
a link carrying its own tab= or time= keeps those values, because the visitor's params override the stored ones.
RECONSIDER — when the answer is to not retire the chart at all
A row is RECONSIDER when the retirement costs the reader something the redirect cannot give
back: the source's log y axis, or an exclusion whose return changes the chart (the two
losses in "A log y axis and an exclusion list are the two things the migration cannot carry").
The block prints, per row, what is lost and where the loss lands — split by whether the fix can
travel at all, which depends on both the loss and the surface:
fixable by hand — prose links (gdoc span-* rows and the legacy WordPress ones), and only
for a log loss: a link's href can be given yScale=log.
CANNOT carry the fix — gdoc embeds (an embed resolves the chart and renders its
default tab, so no query string reaches it — the same fact the hand-edit table below reports),
key-chart slots (no query string), and featured metrics (a chart's tab cannot be featured at
all). The latter two are named, not counted, so the topic owner can see whose pages they are.
Featured metrics are matched by find_references.sweep_featured_metrics, not a local LIKE:
the only handle a featured_metrics row carries is a URL, and LIKE '%/grapher/foo%' cannot
tell foo from foo-bar. That sweep runs after the aliases are resolved and is fed every
one of the source's slugs, because a slot may name an inbound alias rather than the current
slug — and the unpublish deletes the aliases too, so such a slot empties just the same. The count
is per slot, not per topic: one pathname can hold several slots under a single tag (different
incomeGroup rows), each a separate row to re-point, so repeated tags are shown with a
multiplicity (Agriculture x3) rather than collapsed into one.
Both reference counts cover all three ways an article can hold a chart: a prose link, a block
embed, and a raw pasted /grapher/… URL. The last is stored as linkType='url', which
gdoc_references does not read, so it comes from find_references.sweep_gdoc_url_links — which
also unwraps Google redirect wrappers and skips archived hosts. Since the carrier count is the
link/embed split rather than the aggregate postsGdocs, a raw-URL reference left out of both
would be counted nowhere at all.
A reference sweep that fails blocks --apply.gdoc_references is unguarded, so it fails
closed on its own; the raw-URL sweep is guarded only so that a read-only audit still prints what it
did gather, and under --apply it REFUSEDs with a non-zero exit instead. An incomplete references
audit must never authorise the unpublish — that is the same principle that turns a MANUAL row into
BLOCKED, applied to the case where the count is missing rather than alarming. There is
deliberately no waiver flag: retry the sweep, do not wave it through.
NOTHING carries it — an exclusion loss. The target never re-applies exclusions, so no
href, on any surface, brings the entity back off the scatter. An exclusion-only row therefore
reports no "fixable by hand" count at all; the only question it poses is whether the chart
still reads correctly with the entity present.
Getting that split wrong is not cosmetic: counting embeds as fixable, or offering a hand-edit for
an exclusion, makes an unrecoverable row look solved.
It is warn-only on purpose, and that is a deliberate departure from how MANUAL is handled.
A MANUAL reference is turned into BLOCKED because the unpublish would break an explorer or
a data insight, and no editorial view changes that. A lossy retirement breaks nothing — the chart
still renders, on a linear axis, with an extra dot on it — so whether it is acceptable is a
judgment about the chart, not a fact about the database. Roughly a fifth of a batch is
logarithmic (2026-08-14, batch 1: 3 of 14), so blocking those would mean a waiver flag on every
run, and a flag passed every run stops being read. Hence: the verdict gets its own printed block
and a [RECONSIDER: …] suffix on the row's note in the PLAN table, and checklist item 13
requires each one to be answered before the apply — but --apply will not stop for it.
The corollary is that a quiet block is informative: a batch with no RECONSIDER rows means every
retirement in it is a faithful swap, which is worth saying in the report.
Re-point every reference at the new scatter view
Recommend this every time, and do it before applying. The redirect is a safety net for readers who arrive by an old URL — it is not the fix for our own content. Every OWID surface that points at the retired chart should be edited to point at the target chart's scatter view instead:
merged with whatever query string the reference already carries (its own params win, same rule as the redirect — so a reference with tab= or time= of its own needs a decision, not a blind merge). Two reasons it can't wait: an embed never gets fixed by a redirect at all (it resolves the chart itself and renders the target's default tab), and a link works but sends readers through an extra hop that will outlive everyone's memory of why it exists.
The script's own table covers only gdoc links and embeds — enough to spot the param collisions, not a full sweep. For the complete surface list use the shared find-chart-references skill, which is what /map-charts-to-mdim does for the same problem (see scripts/audit_references.py there: it calls run_sweep from find-chart-references/scripts/reference_report.py and adds only the replacement URL, which is the workflow-specific part):
Include the sources' aliases in --chart-slugs: an article may well link an even older slug. The sweep catches what get_chart_references counts but doesn't locate — explorers, data insights, static viz, narrative charts, key-chart slots, WordPress posts — and it reports its own gaps, so a surface it couldn't check is visible rather than silently absent. Triage it the way that skill does: an embed is 🔴 and blocks the row (it breaks the moment the source is unpublished), a link is 🟡 (the 301 keeps it working, and stored keys its params don't mention survive the hop — but a tab= or time= of its own overrides the scatter view, so update the href anyway), and an unpublished or draft page is ℹ️.
The handoff must keep find-chart-references' presentation
Pass the sweep's --json through scripts/build_reference_handoff.py, which adds the two workflow-specific columns — the replacement URL, and the reference's own params that silently override it — while keeping every locating aid the sweep's own markdown provides:
--gaps is not optional in practice: it carries the sweep's run-specific coverage gaps into the handoff, next to the permanent ones the builder restates from the sweep's own NOT_SEARCHED. Without it the handoff says so in a ⚠️ line, because a reader who never opens the sweep would otherwise read a short table as a complete blast radius. --pairs takes either pair schema — Part 1's table rows (admin URLs) or the Part 2 payload (public grapher URLs, resolved against the DB) — so pass whichever list matches the rows actually being retired, and pass it before Part 2 unpublishes them.
Those aids are the difference between a row someone can fix and a row that names an article and leaves them to hunt through it:
📄 doc — the Google Doc to edit. posts_gdocs.idis the Doc id, so it is a direct link, and editing the doc is the only way to fix an embed.
👁 preview — the article in the admin previewer, which renders unpublished drafts the public page won't show.
🔗 page — the published page, deep-linked with a scroll-to-text fragment when the reference has anchor text, so it opens at the reference. The page type decides the base: a data insight is served under /data-insights/ and an author page under /team/, while the sweep records where_path as /<slug> for every gdoc type — and a text fragment attached to the wrong base makes a 404 look like a working link.
Find in the doc — a copy-paste search string: the link text for a prose hyperlink, or the chart slug for a block embed (the doc holds a bare grapher URL there, and posts_gdocs_links.target keeps the slug as the author typed it, so it still matches when the doc uses an older one). A long one is cut short but stays literal — no …, which is not a character in the document and would make the paste find nothing.
Its params — the query string the reference already carries. Both consumers follow the same rule: the replacement URL merges it over the proposed params with the reference's values winning — an editorial choice: an article that pinned a country or a year meant to, and a paste should not silently discard that — and the redirect merges the same way, key by key (see "A reference's own params override the redirect's, key by key" below). So the cell grades collisions only: ⚠️ names the proposed keys the reference overrides — a reference carrying tab=chart lands the reader on a different tab than the retirement intends, and that row needs a decision rather than a paste — while a non-colliding query merges in with the proposed view intact.
yScale=log when the retiring chart had a log y axis. The applier never forces yAxis.scaleType: log on a target — yAxis is global, so it would flip the line/bar views too — it only enables the toggle and leaves the default linear. A source authored on a log y axis therefore becomes a linear scatter on the target, and its shape changes: the author chose log because that is the shape the relationship has. So the replacement link proposes yScale=log for exactly those rows, restoring it for that view alone, on the same principle as time=latest and country= — each stands in for something a URL-supplied tab does not get. That is the whole recovery channel, though: it only reaches surfaces that have a URL, which is why a log row is also a RECONSIDER row rather than a solved problem.
Read the flag from the source, never the target: the target's yAxis.scaleType is deliberately left linear, so it cannot tell you what the retiring chart looked like. Because the param is per-row, the ⚠️ collision check is against that row's proposal rather than a shared constant — so a reference's own yScale=linear is an override on a log row and merely its own setting everywhere else. (2026-08-14, batch 1: 3 of 14 sources were log — 6045, 663, 3740 — and one article link on 663 already carried yScale=linear, which wins and is flagged.)
The Part 2 redirect carries it too, so the two paths agree for a bare slug: a reader arriving at a retired slug with no query string gets the same log scatter as someone following a hand-updated article link. (A query string keeps every stored key it doesn't override — see the next section.) chart_slug_redirects.target_query_param is per-row, so redirect_to_scatter.py appends yScale=log to that row's stored query — the one part of TARGET_QUERY that varies by row. Everything Part 2 prints about that row quotes the same per-row query rather than the constant: the collision grading, and the narrative-chart "reproduce this view" URL (so a replacement built for a log source keeps the log axis).
A reference's own params override the redirect's, key by key
The production redirect MERGES the visitor's query over target_query_param, the visitor winning per key. Establishing this needs a distinguishing pair: a test whose query sets a stored key (?tab=map against stored tab=line) produces the same URL under merge and under wholesale replacement, and this section shipped a wrong "wholesale" conclusion for a day on exactly that evidence. The case that separates the models is a query that does NOT mention a stored key (production, 2026-08-14, global-forestry-area-1958-2014 → forest-area-km?tab=line):
A reference's params cost the reader exactly the stored keys they collide with: a link carrying only country=~FRA keeps tab=scatter&time=latest (and a log row's yScale=log) and just pins the country. params_cell flags ⚠️ with the overridden keys and prints a non-colliding query as fine.
Hand-updating a link still matters when its params override tab or time — those land the reader off the scatter view.
This describes the PRODUCTION 404→301 function. Two other layers behave differently, and both the same way: staging's serving layer and a fresh row's first-week static 302 (_redirects) each answer with the stored query and drop the visitor's params entirely (staging: batch-1 staging apply, 2026-08-14; the 302: verified on production right after the batch-1 apply, same day, held to this section's own standard — non-colliding ?foo=bar and ?xScale=log were dropped, which a stored-side-wins merge would have kept, and colliding ?country=~CHL / ?tab=chart landed on the stored query too, on a log and a plain row both). So for its first week a fresh redirect sends every arrival to the stored view; the per-key merge only starts once the 302 expires and the 301 function takes over. Neither layer can validate this section's merge claim.
Re-verify with a distinguishing pair (a query that omits a stored key) if grapher changes how chart redirects are baked or served. functions/_common/redirectTools.ts's explorer path also merges per key but with the TARGET winning — a different code path; don't generalize from it in either direction.
All three consumers get the log set from apply_scatter_defaults.log_y_axis_sources, which owns the reversed-source exclusion — do not re-derive it. It is now a one-line wrapper over source_lossiness, which reads the log flag and excludedEntityNames off the same single config query so Part 2 can grade a retirement without fetching every source config a second time; take the log set from the wrapper and the pair of losses from source_lossiness, never by re-reading yAxis.scaleType locally. A reversed source (GDP on its y) must be excluded: its scaleType describes the GDP axis, while the target's y is the non-GDP indicator, so proposing log there would make the wrong axis logarithmic. That is the same reason process_row skips its y-oriented mirrors for a reversed source, and getting it right in one script while forgetting it in another is exactly how this went wrong once.
One limit remains: a reference that forces a non-scatter tab still receives the proposal, since the source's log was a global setting — but it is being applied to a view the author's choice was not about, so treat those rows as a judgment call.
Import those formatters from the find-chart-references scripts; never reimplement them — a second copy drifts, and the drift shows up as a handoff whose links quietly stop resolving. Take each one from whichever module gets it right: doc_url, gdoc_preview_url and cell from find_references.py, and the page link plus the search string from reference_report.py (page_deep_link, find_in_doc, and its cell(..., marker="")), which is the module that handles the page-type routes and the literal truncation. Strip the tailscale suffix from the admin root you pass them, so the links read like the sweep's own (which are already short).
They only apply to Google Doc surfaces, though — doc_url and gdoc_preview_url read surface_idas a Doc id, and on an explorer or narrative-chart row that field holds a slug or a chart id, which renders as a Doc link resolving to nothing. So the two article tables are filtered to GDOC_SURFACES, every other surface gets the section that explains its own consequence, and whatever no section claims lands in a catch-all table — a row the sweep found must never go missing here.
Section order: embeds → links → explorer/DI/static-viz → narrative charts → key charts → featured metrics → catch-all. It is roughly by urgency, but the tail is ordered by kind of task instead: a key-chart row is a tag association, not a reference in a document, so it wants the admin rather than Google Docs. Putting it last keeps the doc-editing run uninterrupted rather than splitting it in two.
The narrative-chart section is the one place a placement table appears: gdoc (narrative chart) rows, which name the articles that place each narrative chart by name. They are deliberately excluded from GDOC_SURFACES — the surface is a gdoc, but the row references the narrative chart, not the chart being retired, so counting it among the article embeds would overstate both. Nest them under their narrative chart instead, with the same Doc / previewer / page links and search string the embed and link tables get, since the article edit is a step of the replacement.
Key-chart slots — no query string reaches them
get_chart_references counts postsWordpress, postsGdocs, explorers, narrativeCharts, dataInsights and staticViz. Key charts are none of those — a key chart is a chart↔tag association (chart_tags.keyChartLevel), not a row in any reference table. redirect_to_scatter.py therefore queries chart_tags itself (key_chart_slots) for its keych column; before it did, its verdicts looked clean while topic pages quietly depended on the chart being unpublished.
Unpublishing the source does not break a link here; it removes the chart from the topic page's key-chart list. So the loss is silent, on pages nobody is looking at during the migration. Move each association to the target chart (same tag, same keyChartLevel) as part of step 11.
But a moved slot renders the target's DEFAULT view, not the scatter.GdocPost.loadRelatedCharts selects only chartId, slug, title, variantName, keyChartLevel, and RelatedCharts renders <GrapherWithFallback slug={activeChartSlug}> — there is nowhere to put a query string, so neither tab=scatter nor a log row's yScale=log can travel here. Where the page was featuring the chart because it was a scatter, moving the association is not an equivalent swap; that is what makes a key-chart slot the surface that can turn a RECONSIDER row into "keep the standalone chart". Tell the topic owner rather than moving it quietly.
Step 11 still says not to trust a quiet Part 2 audit, because the keych column counts slots and the full sweep locates them: on 2026-08-04 the audit's own tables held 6 embeds + 3 links, while the sweep found 15 key-chart slots across 13 topic pages — the largest single category.
Featured metrics — the scatter view cannot hold one
Same blind spot as key charts, same reason: a featured metric is a row in featured_metrics keyed by URL, so it is in none of the tables get_chart_references counts. Part 2 reads them itself for the RECONSIDER block (featured_metric_slots), but only for the rows that block reports — the ⭐ handoff section is still where every slot is listed and settled. It feeds a topic page's featured rail and the top of that topic's search results. And unlike a key chart it does not heal itself — the row is resolved only when Algolia indexes, matching pathname and exact params against published records, so unpublishing empties the slot silently. The one signal is an "Algolia Featured Metric Indexing Failures" post in Slack after the next index.
The scatter view cannot be featured at all. A featured metric names a chart, an MDIM view or an explorer view — never a chart's tab. tab= is a reader param: the admin strips it on paste, and a chart's Algolia record carries no query params, so a URL keeping tab=scatter matches nothing and fails to index.
So each row is an editorial decision, not a swap: feature the target chart's default view (a different chart from the retired scatter — say so when you hand it over), feature something else, or drop the slot. The topic's owner decides, and it has to happen before the unpublish, since adding a row requires a published slug. This is the one item in Part 2 that is unrecoverable rather than merely broken. The handoff's ⭐ section grades whether the target already holds a slot on that tag — where it does, only the old row needs deleting.
Narrative charts
They do not block the retirement. A narrative chart parented to a chart owns a materialized full config and renders from it, so unpublishing the parent leaves it intact (isPublished is in NARRATIVE_CHART_PROPS_TO_OMIT). Its only use of the parent slug is the "Explore the data" href, which GrapherState.canonicalUrlIfIsNarrativeChart builds as /grapher/<parent-slug> + queryParamsForParentChart, and the redirect resolves that slug. narrativeCharts is therefore counted but deliberately not part of the MANUAL gate.
What the redirect does not guarantee is delivering the scatter to it — see "A reference's own params override the redirect's, key by key" below. A narrative chart always has params, and they routinely include tab (its own view's tab), which overrides the stored tab=scatter; stored keys its params don't mention survive the hop.
Do not tell anyone to use the chart's "Create narrative chart" control — a plain chart has no such control. An earlier version of this skill did, and it is wrong in a way that is easy to believe because MDIMs do have it:
CreateNarrativeChartEditorPage returns NotFoundPage unless type === "multiDim", so /admin/narrative-charts/create cannot be reached for a chart parent at all.
The site-side affordance is gated on manager.adminCreateNarrativeChartPath (GrapherState.createNarrativeChartUrl), and only site/multiDim/MultiDim.tsx and MultiDimDataPageContent.tsx ever set it. Not the share menu, not the chart page, nowhere.
The POST route does accept {"type": "chart", "parentChartId": …} (createNarrativeChartFromChart), so the capability exists with no click-path to it.
Since every target in this migration is a plain chart, the API is the only way to create a replacement. Re-pointing is not an alternative: updateNarrativeChart reads both parent columns off the existing row, so they are INSERT-only and always will be (owid/owid-grapher#6872, closed as not-planned).
So present three options and let the curator choose, rather than prescribing a rebuild:
Leave it. It renders correctly forever; only the "Explore the data" landing view is off. Often the right call.
Ask a developer to create the replacement via the API.
Wait for the target to become an MDIM, then use the MDIM's own control, which does exist.
Keep the handoff's narrative section short. The mechanism above is for you, not the curator: the handoff states only which narrative chart to replace and how, and the how is keyed by what the target is — a plain chart (developer/API, or leave it) vs. an MDIM (the target view's own "Create narrative chart" control). narrative_chart_mechanism() is that intro; don't grow it back into the citations.
If they choose to replace it, order matters — create rejects a duplicate name, delete is refused while a published post references the name, and update writes only query params, so there is no rename:
Create it against the target, reproducing /grapher/<target-slug>?tab=scatter&time=latest&country= plus &yScale=log on a log row (which is why the script prints that row's own stored query, not the constant). The handoff labels this column "Replace with a narrative chart of" and builds it with view_to_reproduce, not replacement_url: a narrative chart's queryParamsForParentChart routinely carry tab=chart, so merging them would name the target's line or slope view and you would rebuild the wrong one. Those params are its "Explore the data" href, not what it renders — its view comes from its own configFull. They still belong on the page in their own column, because nothing authored transfers: FAUST, entity selection and time pins are what you re-author the story from.
Update every article that places it to the new name. The handoff lists them per narrative chart with the Doc, previewer and page links, and the search string to paste — the placements come from find_references.sweep_articles_placing_narrative_charts. A narrative chart is not itself in an article, so this hop is the only thing that says where the edit lands.
Delete the old one — now unreferenced, so it succeeds. Never delete first.
POST {admin_api}/narrative-charts takes {"type": "chart", "name": "<kebab-case>", "parentChartId": <target chart id>, "config": <the OLD narrative chart's rendered full config>} and DELETE {admin_api}/narrative-charts/<id> removes the old. Get config from AdminAPI.get_narrative_chart(<old id>)["configFull"] — the endpoint derives the patch by diffing against the new parent, so pass the rendered full config, not the old patch. AdminAPI has no create/delete for narrative charts, so this is hand-rolled HTTP.
Apply, in this order
The order is forced by which calls trigger a bake:
Create (or delete-then-recreate) the redirect on the target. There is no update endpoint, so wrong query params mean delete + create; if the create fails the original row is put back, and if that restore also fails the row reports CRITICAL with the repair.
Re-point the source's own old slugs at the target. Unpublishing a chart deletes every chart_slug_redirects row pointing at it, so without this step those URLs become hard 404s. Each alias is deleted and re-created on the target — the UNIQUE constraint on slug leaves no other way. An alias's own query params are not carried over (they were written for the old chart) but are reported.
Settle any featured-metric slots the handoff's ⭐ section lists, at /admin/featured-metrics. Last chance: step 4 unpublishes the source, and a featured metric can only be added for a published slug. See "Featured metrics" above — the scatter view itself cannot be featured, so this is a decision for the topic's owner rather than a swap.
Unpublish the source. This is both what makes the redirect fire (it only resolves on a 404) and what triggers the static build.
Both failure directions are handled so no URL is ever left unserved. If any alias fails to move, it is restored on the source and the unpublish is skipped — otherwise the unpublish would delete the restored row and create exactly the 404 step 2 exists to prevent. If the unpublish itself fails, the source is likewise left published. Either way the row reports CRITICAL with what to do.
Every bail-out that leaves the source published also rolls the redirect back, including the skipped-unpublish one: a row touched in the last week bakes as an unconditional static 302 that does not wait for a 404 (see the mechanism notes), so leaving it behind would send readers away from the chart the bail-out just decided to keep serving. For an UPDATE the rollback re-creates the row that was replaced, rather than only deleting the replacement — deleting alone would end the run having destroyed a redirect it meant to re-point. Anything the rollback cannot undo is named in the report with the manual repair.
Mechanism / environment notes
?tab=scatter is the valid scatter tab query param (GRAPHER_TAB_CONFIG_OPTIONS.scatter); it is stored without the leading ?.
Resolution is 404-only at the edge, then a 301 with max-age=86400. A fresh row additionally gets a static 302 in _redirects for one week, listed ahead of the site redirects, to defeat the CDN cache.
The stored params are only a base: the visitor's own query params override them key by key. Good for ?country=/?region= links, which keep their selection through the hop.
POST /charts/<id>/redirects/new triggers no static build (the delete and the unpublish do), and validates nothing — no duplicate, chain or self-redirect check. Hence the pre-checks above.
A source that is already unpublished bakes nothing, so the redirect would serve nothing until an unrelated mutation happened to bake the site. When a row hits that combination — CREATEorEXISTS, with no aliases to re-point — the script asks for a deploy itself (PUT /deploy, the admin's "Manually triggered deploy"), once per run however many rows needed it, and reports DEPLOY FAILED with the manual repair if the call fails. EXISTS is included deliberately: a row can be there and still have never been baked, because a previous run's deploy failed or because someone added the alternative URL in the chart editor, which bakes nothing either. Every other path already has a delete or an unpublish doing it.
chart_slug_redirects is per-environment and is not synced staging→production by chart-diff. Run on staging to test, then re-run --apply --allow-production against production admin.owid.io once the scatter views are live there.
OWID_ENV (hence the admin host) is derived from the current git branch — be on the branch whose staging holds the scatter views. On master it resolves to production, which is what the guard is for.
Once the redirect exists, isSlugUsedInRedirect blocks re-publishing the source (or any chart) on that slug. To undo, delete the redirect rows first, then re-publish — the reverse order is rejected.
The reference queries union a chart's own slug with its chart_slug_redirects slugs, so afterwards the old chart's referrers show up under the target's Refs tab.
Verifying Part 2
Finalize every apply with the closing report. Once the bake lands, run the same script in --verify mode and hand the user its table — the skill is not done until every row grades OK:
It reads every chart_slug_redirects row pointing at the batch's targets (the old slugs, the re-pointed aliases, and any pre-existing aliases of the targets — one invariant covers all three) and checks the live site serves each: a 30x whose Location matches that row's target and stored query, compared parsed so encoding and key order can't false-alarm. The DB rows alone can't close the gate, though — a planned redirect that was deleted or never created is simply absent from them, and a report built on rows alone would certify the leftovers. So the report also requires every payload row to stand at EXISTS in the same run's plan and fails the rest as NOT_APPLIED, naming the reason. NOT_LIVE (cached 200) and NOT_SERVED (404) mean the bake or CDN purge hasn't landed — re-run until clean; it exits non-zero while anything fails. The manual checks below remain for what HTTP can't see.
curl -sI <site>/grapher/<old-slug> → 301 to /grapher/<target-slug>?tab=scatter&time=latest&country=.
curl -s <site>/grapher/_grapherRedirects.json | jq '."<old-slug>"' → "<target-slug>?tab=scatter&time=latest&country=" (bare slugs on both sides — the baker passes an empty URL prefix).
Each re-pointed alias resolves to the same target.
Re-run the script: every row comes back EXISTS and nothing is mutated.
Open the redirected URL in a browser and check the two things no curl can: the scatter opens on a single latest year (not a range with connecting trails), and no entities are highlighted — i.e. time=latest and the empty country= both survived the param merge and did the job the tab click would have done. Compare against clicking the scatter tab on the target directly; the two should look the same. If country= was dropped somewhere in the merge, the target's line/bar selection will show up emphasized — that is the symptom to look for.
