weatherreporter/docs/operations.md

Weatherreporter Operations

This guide covers normal operation, generated artifacts, inspection, recovery, and operational caveats. For symptom-specific diagnosis, see Troubleshooting.

Normal Workflow

Generation commands:

weatherreporter generate daily --date 2026-05-29
weatherreporter generate today
weatherreporter generate tomorrow
weatherreporter generate hourly
weatherreporter generate three-day
weatherreporter generate weekend
weatherreporter generate storm --start 2026-05-29T18:00 --end 2026-05-30T06:00

Generation commands resolve a report period, fetch a Weather API bundle, build a JSON module snapshot, build a YAML prompt input data package, run scriptorium render, and write managed artifacts under the configured workspace. Markdown-path reports then run scriptorium run directly to the managed Markdown report path.

generate today, generate tomorrow, and generate hourly use the generated-text-template workflow. They run structured scriptorium run to raw GeneratedText JSON, validate the structured text, save a render context, and render the managed Markdown report from embedded templates. generate today covers the selected or current local civil day. generate hourly covers the six-hour rolling period from generation time in the effective report timezone and is not part of scheduled morning or evening batches.

generate daily remains the existing Daily Today report and is independent of generate today.

When distributor notification is enabled, weatherreporter uploads the managed Markdown report after report rendering succeeds and final metadata is saved. --out PATH writes an extra Markdown copy for generated reports; it is not used as the distributor upload source.

Batch commands:

weatherreporter run morning
weatherreporter run evening

run morning generates Today Report and the 3-Day Outlook, plus Weekend Outlook except on Sunday. run evening generates the Tomorrow Report. Batch commands print a JSON summary to stdout, write compact per-report status lines to stderr, continue independent reports after one report fails, and return nonzero when any report failed. When notification is configured, the summary and status lines include notification status, accepted distributor run ID, or notification error fields for each attempted report. --out-dir PATH writes extra Markdown copies using report default filenames such as today.md, three-day.md, weekend.md, and tomorrow.md; these copies are not used as distributor upload sources.

Filesystem Layout

The default workspace root is workspace.

workspace/
  snapshots/
    daily/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
    today/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.raw.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.run.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.json
        <run_id>.render_context.json
    three-day/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
    weekend/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
    hourly/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.raw.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.run.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.json
        <run_id>.render_context.json
    tomorrow/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.raw.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.run.json
        <run_id>.generated_text.json
        <run_id>.render_context.json
    storm/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.modules.json
        <run_id>.metadata.json
  data-packages/
    daily/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
    today/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
    three-day/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
    weekend/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
    hourly/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
    tomorrow/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
    storm/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.data_package.yaml
  preflight/
    daily/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
    today/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
    three-day/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
    weekend/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
    hourly/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
    tomorrow/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
    storm/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.render.json
  notifications/
    daily/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
    today/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
    three-day/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
    weekend/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
    hourly/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
    tomorrow/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
    storm/
      YYYY-MM-DD/
        <run_id>.distributor.json
  reports/
    daily/
      <run_id>.md
    today/
      <run_id>.md
    three-day/
      <run_id>.md
    weekend/
      <run_id>.md
    hourly/
      <run_id>.md
    tomorrow/
      <run_id>.md
    storm/
      <run_id>.md

Managed artifact filenames use the RunID, so repeated runs for the same valid period do not overwrite each other.

RunID And Metadata

RunIDs are based on generation time plus report ID:

20260529T100000.123456789Z_daily_today
20260529T100000.123456789Z_today

Each generated report writes metadata that links:

• RunID, report ID, variant, and prompt ID
• generation time, timezone, and valid period
• source location, source hashes, and source warnings
• module snapshot path
• prompt input data package path
• preflight output path
• managed Markdown report path
• generated text schema ID and generated-text artifact paths for generated-text-template reports
• distributor notification debug artifact path, when notification is attempted

Batch summaries include report status, error text when applicable, notification outcome when attempted, valid period, and known artifact paths for each attempted report. Notification fields are notificationStatus, notificationRunId, and notificationError.

Distributor Notification

Distributor notification is configured with notify.distributor and is disabled by default. When enabled, weatherreporter uploads the managed Markdown report path recorded in the report result and metadata. That single source file can be mapped to one or more configured bundle paths. By default, it is mapped to one dated report path. Extra copies written by --out or --out-dir are operator conveniences only.

The rendered pipeline ID selects the configured distributor http_upload workflow. The default bundle ID is a stable logical source identity derived from producer name, location ID, and report ID:

weatherreporter.{location_id}.{report_id}

The default idempotency key appends RunID to the rendered bundle ID so each report generation has a distinct retry identity. The default bundle path uses the valid-period start date, artifact group, and RunID. Distributor owns destination merge, retention, and derived snapshot behavior such as latest. For Today, the default report ID and artifact group values are both today, and the batch output filename value is today.md.

Notification happens after final metadata save for generated reports. Weather API, module snapshot, data-package, render preflight, Scriptorium run, generated-text validation, template rendering, and metadata-save failures do not trigger notification. A notification failure fails that report. In a batch, other reports continue, the failed report includes notification fields in the JSON summary, and the batch returns nonzero.

Each notification attempt writes a debug artifact under notifications/. The artifact records the rendered pipeline ID, bundle ID, idempotency key, managed source path, bundle-relative paths, bundle created timestamp, accepted upload response, and the latest distributor run status response when available. Weatherreporter polls status until distributor reports succeeded or failed, or until the configured notification timeout expires. The run status includes the distributor status, error text, and raw run report JSON, which can show actions such as replace_older, skip_same, skip_destination_newer, or failed. Token values are not written.

Weatherreporter is responsible for selecting the managed Markdown report, constructing a source bundle, and submitting it to the configured distributor HTTP endpoint. Distributor remains responsible for destination routing, publication, and any downstream Markdown-to-HTML transformation. Distributor leaves destination files alone when they are not tracked by a newly uploaded bundle, so existing uploaded dated report paths can remain available.

Inspection

Inspection commands read existing workspace artifacts and emit JSON to stdout. They do not fetch weather data or run scriptorium.

weatherreporter inspect reports --limit 10
weatherreporter inspect metadata RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect modules RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect data-package RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect prior RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect sources RUN_ID

Use inspect reports to find RunIDs and artifact paths. Use inspect metadata to see the artifact links recorded for a run. Use inspect modules to review the persisted ordered module snapshot, and inspect data-package to review the structured prompt package used for rendering. Use inspect prior to see the prior comparable snapshot selected for Recent Changes, or null when none exists. Use inspect sources to review source provenance and warnings without dumping full weather payloads.

Recent Changes

Recent Changes are computed from structured module snapshots, not rendered Markdown or YAML text.

Daily Today compares with prior Daily Today snapshots for the same valid local date. Today Report compares with prior Today Report snapshots for the same valid local date. Tomorrow Report compares with prior Tomorrow Report snapshots for the same valid local date. 3-Day Outlook compares with prior compatible 3-Day snapshots for the same valid local date. Weekend Outlook compares with prior compatible Weekend snapshots for the same weekend window. Hourly Report and Storm Report leave Recent Changes empty.

When no prior comparable snapshot exists, or no configured threshold is crossed, recentChanges.items is empty.

Recovery

A failed generation run may still leave useful artifacts:

• If scriptorium render returns a result with a nonzero exit code, the preflight JSON and metadata are written for inspection.
• If scriptorium run exits nonzero after writing a report, the managed report and metadata remain available.
• Generated-text failures for Today, Tomorrow, and Hourly reports preserve available intermediate artifacts, such as the structured run result, raw generated-text JSON, validated generated text, and render context. Metadata links those paths when it can be safely written.
• If distributor notification fails, report artifacts and final metadata remain available, but the report or batch command returns nonzero.
• For batch commands, inspect the stdout JSON summary first, then inspect the artifact paths for each failed report.

For a bad report, start with:

weatherreporter inspect metadata RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect sources RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect modules RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect data-package RUN_ID
weatherreporter inspect prior RUN_ID

Operational Caveats

• The application uses one configured Weather API endpoint.
• The application writes local filesystem state only.
• The application does not implement resume, cleanup, archive, remote storage, daemon operation, or automatic storm monitoring.
• Generated reports and Scriptorium stderr can contain sensitive operational context. Store workspace artifacts with appropriate filesystem permissions.