district-migration

name	district-migration
description	Promote a Kerala district from research corpus to live app data. Use when: creating district override JSON, migrating research candidates, populating district-candidates files, onboarding a new district.

District Migration

When to Use

• A district needs its first override JSON in public/data/district-candidates/
• Research has been reviewed and verified for a district
• Post-withdrawal candidate lists need to be turned into app data

Publish Gate (blocking)

All three must exist before promotion:

1. research/constituency-coverage/<district>.md
2. research/constituency-coverage-reviews/<district>-review.md
3. research/constituency-coverage-verification/<district>-verification.md

Read the review and verification files. Only promote candidates that pass a conservative read.

Procedure

1. Confirm all three publish-gate files exist
2. Read the verification file — note which seats are supportable vs not
3. Read public/data/constituencies.json — collect all constituency IDs for the district
4. Read an existing override file (e.g. thiruvananthapuram.json) as format reference
5. For each constituency in the district, capture every supportable named candidate in the structured live field
6. Sync the research layer first, then regenerate public/data/district-candidates/<district>.json
7. Run the validation skill to verify

Published Candidate Row Format

{
  "id": "candidate-<constituencyId>-<party-or-name>-2026",
  "name": "<Name>",
  "frontId": "LDF|UDF|NDA|SPA|TVK|NTK|Independent|Other|<published front id>",
  "frontLabel": "LDF|UDF|NDA|SPA|TVK|NTK|Independent|Other|<front label>",
  "party": "<Abbreviation>",
  "partyFull": "<Full party name>",
  "constituencyId": "<constituency-id>",
  "age": null,
  "education": null,
  "photo": null,
  "timeline": [],
  "verificationStatus": "under_review",
  "confidence": "High|Medium|Low",
  "lastReviewed": "<YYYY-MM-DD>",
  "sourceNote": "<Brief provenance note>"
}

Confidence Rules

• High: Candidate directly named in official party list or verified news source
• Medium: Sitting MLA retention or strong single-source reporting
• Low: Compiled tables, Wikipedia, or conflicting names across sources

Constraints

• Every constituency in the district MUST have at least one row — no gaps
• Include one row per supportable named candidate when the district packet has multiple lanes
• Do not add age, education, photo, or timeline — keep rows thin
• sourceNote must cite the actual source, not generic text