Stabilized clean-slate pipeline scaffold and legacy boundaries

• Day: 2026-04-24
• Time: 10:35 to 10:45
• Project: Dev
• Workspace: WP 2: Operational
• Status: In Progress
• Priority: HIGH
• Assignee: Matías Nehuen Iglesias
• Tags: Git, Pipeline, Notebooks, Refactor, Contracts, Smoke-Test

Description

Session Goal

Assess a fragile, notebook-driven poverty metrics repository and determine the safest path to modernize it without breaking publication-critical outputs. The focus was on deciding whether to wrap legacy notebooks, extract the poverty core, or use a clean-slate branch as a contract source.

Key Activities

• Reviewed multiple memos about the recovered repository’s state, emphasizing that it is operationally untrusted even if it is technically recoverable.
• Evaluated Git strategy for a destructive clean-slate branch and concluded it should not be merged wholesale because it deletes most of the legacy repo.
• Proposed using a Git worktree / sandbox for isolated experimentation while preserving the legacy notebooks and outputs.
• Identified the need for a pipeline inventory before refactoring: define inputs, outputs, stage boundaries, and publication-critical artifacts first.
• Diagnosed packaging and execution issues in the clean scaffold, including src-layout import problems and premature legacy imports.
• Recommended making the scaffold runnable first via PYTHONPATH, editable install / pyproject fixes, Makefile support, and contract-only smoke tests.
• Suggested a staged migration path for legacy constants and stage logic, preferably through a dedicated legacy namespace or config layer rather than direct contamination of the new scaffold.

Achievements

• Clarified the decision framework for the repository: preserve legacy state, treat the clean-slate branch as a selective source of scaffolding, and validate with smoke checks before broader refactors.
• Established a safer recovery workflow centered on contract definition, artifact snapshotting, and boundary hardening.
• Narrowed the immediate technical priority to making the clean scaffold runnable and testable before importing any more legacy stage logic.

Pending Tasks

• Build a complete pipeline inventory and current-state contract for the poverty metrics repo.
• Isolate stage 01 imports and remove mixed-responsibility modules.
• Implement contract-based smoke tests and verify the scaffold runs cleanly.
• Decide whether legacy constants should live in a namespaced compatibility module or be externalized into YAML/config.
• Only after the above, evaluate whether to transplant additional logic from the legacy notebooks or the clean-slate branch.

Evidence

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• event_ids: []