content-populate

name	content-populate
description	Use when populating, filling in, seeding, or writing up a house or a character in the-known-world repo — e.g. "populate House Crakehall", "fill in `crakehall.md`", "populate Eddard Stark", "seed Cersei", "write up Robert Baratheon" — i.e. turn a stub or thin `content/houses/<slug>.md` or `content/characters/<slug>.md` into a fully populated entry with AWOIAF-sourced frontmatter and a prose body.

TKW Populate Content Entry

Overview

content/houses/ ships ~124 stubs and content/characters/ ships ~288 entries. Populating one means filling its frontmatter from AWOIAF and writing a prose body in the in-universe maester's voice.

The workflow below is identical for both. The field spec differs, so read the matching reference before you touch the file:

Entry type	Schema	Renderer	Field spec
House	HouseSchema in lib/schemas.ts	components/HouseInfobox.tsx	references/house-fields.md
Character	CharacterSchema in lib/schemas.ts	app/characters/[slug]/page.tsx	references/character-fields.md

Invariants

• One entry per commit. Never batch. Git history is the audit trail.
• Don't commit until the user asks. CLAUDE.md governs: no commits, pushes, branches, or PRs on your own initiative. When they do ask, follow git-commit-and-pr-format.
• Run bun run test before reporting done — the script is bun test --isolate --dots, and a bare bun test drops the isolation the suite is written against.
• Never fabricate canon. If AWOIAF doesn't record a field, leave it empty ("") or null. An invented motto or death scene is worse than a blank.

The seven-step workflow

1. Read the existing file

content/houses/<slug>.md      or      content/characters/<slug>.md

Confirm it is a stub. For houses that means empty seat, words, sigil.description, and year: 0. For characters it means born: null, died: null, empty arrays, no body.

If the fields are already filled, stop and ask — the user may want an enhancement, not a populate. If the file doesn't exist at all, stop and confirm the slug before creating it; slug shape drives the family graph and the sigil allowlist.

2. Decide the shape

Houses have one shape. Characters have two — full character or placeholder — and picking wrong ships a broken family tree. See references/character-fields.md §"Full or placeholder".

3. Fetch the AWOIAF page

https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_<Name>
https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/<Name_With_Underscores>

Disambiguated articles use parens: .../Lord_Bracken_(Hand_of_the_King). WebFetch the infobox plus the lede — one fetch resolves nearly every field. The reference file lists exactly what to pull.

4. Fill the frontmatter

Match the field order used across existing entries; the schema accepts any order but readers expect the conventional one. Omit a key entirely when its value would be [] — the schema defaults empty arrays. Don't write parents: [] or invent a seats: array that just repeats seat:.

5. Wire the cross-references

Every slug you write points at another content file. Nothing validates these, but the renderers degrade visibly — a dangling slug leaks raw kebab-case into the page instead of a link.

Field	Points at	If missing
seat	content/castles/<slug>.md	humanized slug, no link
liege, cadet-houses[], primary-house	content/houses/<slug>.md	raw slug as text, no link
also-of-houses[]	content/houses/<slug>.md	silently dropped
heads[].slug	content/characters/<slug>.md	name renders plain, no link
parents[], spouses[], children[]	content/characters/<slug>.md	raw slug as non-link text

ls content/houses/, ls content/castles/, ls content/characters/ before guessing a slug. Don't create stub files just to make a link work — graceful fallback is the design — but do point at files that exist, or at placeholders you create in the same change.

6. Write the prose body

Two to three paragraphs after the closing ---, separated by blank lines, in the in-universe maester's voice of The World of Ice & Fire. Length scales with importance; the reference file gives the per-tier sizing.

Style, both entry types:

• Straight quotes ("), em-dashes (—), no HTML, no headings inside the body.
• Italicize book titles, dragon names, and named weapons with *asterisks*: *A Game of Thrones*, *Ice*, *Nymeria*.
• Prefer concrete events over abstractions — "on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor" beats "tragically".
• Never ship an empty body for a non-placeholder entry; the page renders the body as the article.

7. Add the source and verify

sources:
  - type: awoiaf
    url: https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/<Article_Name>
    license: CC-BY-SA-3.0

One AWOIAF source is the convention, including for placeholders. Then:

bun run test

Then report done with this emoji vocabulary — the emojis live in the chat report only, never inside the entry's frontmatter or maester-voice prose:

- 📜 `content/houses/<slug>.md` populated from AWOIAF
- 🔗 <n> cross-referenced slugs, all resolve
- 🧪 `bun run test` ✅ (<n> pass)

A stop-and-ask (already-populated file, missing slug, no AWOIAF article) leads with ❓; a failing suite leads with 🛑 and the failing output.

When the user asks for the commit, follow git-commit-and-pr-format:

TKW: populate `<slug>.md` from AWOIAF

- add sigil, words, seat, liege, founded date, status
- add `heads`, `titles`, `regions` info-entry arrays
- write 2-paragraph body covering founding and state at AGOT

Shared date fields

Houses use founded; characters use born and died. All three take the same shape:

year: <int> # negative for BC / pre-Conquest
era: <era-enum>
precision: <enum>

Allowed era: dawn-age, age-of-heroes, long-night, andal-invasion, targaryen-conquest, roberts-reign, game-of-thrones, AC, BC. Allowed precision: exact, year, decade, era, legendary.

• Specific dated events (Baratheon founded 1 AC, Eddard born 263 AC) → precision: year.
• Ancient lines with a named-but-undated founder (Stark, Lannister, Hightower) → precision: legendary, era age-of-heroes or dawn-age, year the conventional rough estimate (-8000, -10000).
• "Around 200 AC" → precision: decade, year: 200.
• Unknown birth or death → the whole born / died key is null. There is no precision: unknown.
• year: 0 is the house stub marker. Never leave it — pick a defensible number even if rough.

Quick reference

Step	Action
1	Read the file, confirm it's a stub
2	House, full character, or placeholder
3	WebFetch the AWOIAF article
4	Fill frontmatter per the reference file, omitting empty arrays
5	Verify every cross-referenced slug exists
6	Write the body, sized to importance
7	bun run test, then commit only when asked

Red flags — STOP and rewrite

Thought	Reality
"AWOIAF is slow, I'll write from training memory"	No. Infobox + lede is one fetch and it is canonical. Verify before writing.
"This minor entry has almost nothing on AWOIAF — let me invent a motto / a death scene"	No. Empty words: "" and died: null are correct answers. Don't fabricate canon.
"The sigil description in my head is more vivid than AWOIAF's"	Use AWOIAF's phrasing, trimmed to charge-first, field-last. Vivid invention is non-canon.
"Founded year: 0 is fine to keep"	No. year: 0 is the stub marker. Replace it.
"I'll set born: 0 for an unknown birth"	No. Unknown is born: null.
"I'll add parents: [] to look complete"	No. Omit keys whose value would be [].
"I'll bundle three short entries in one commit"	No. One entry per commit.
"I'll mark it draft: true since the body is rough"	No. Drafts aren't a workflow stage here. Polish it or don't ship it.
"I rewrote half the family graph / a dozen other stubs while I was in there"	No. Drive-by edits ship separately.
"bun test is the right command"	No. bun run test — it adds --isolate --dots.
"I'll add a Co-Authored-By: Claude trailer"	No. git-commit-and-pr-format forbids it.
"I'll work straight on main and commit when done"	No. CLAUDE.md owns branching and committing — wait to be told.

Related skills

• git-commit-and-pr-format — the commit message for the populate
• sigil-wiring — registering a house's PNG so it stops rendering the regional fallback