Data model

Every field the site accepts in data/ and docs/, what the build checks, and how files refer to each other.

Everything on this site is a file in the public repository: labs, events, tutorials, positions and news in data/, one file per entry; documents in docs/; network settings in data/network.yml. At build time every file is checked against a schema in src/content.config.ts (settings against src/lib/network.ts) using the vocabularies in src/lib/taxonomy.ts. This page lists exactly what those schemas enforce. Most people should use the forms on the Join page instead. How submissions are reviewed and merged is in the operations handbook.

Conventions used below

The id of an entry is its file name without the extension: data/labs/jane-doe.yml has the id jane-doe. Names are lowercase with hyphens.
URL means a full address with its scheme, such as https://example.org/lab.
Date means YYYY-MM-DD, unquoted.
Time means 24-hour HH:MM in Hong Kong Time, quoted (“16:00”), because unquoted YAML may read it as a number.
Quote titles that contain a colon.
Every collection has draft (yes/no, default false). See Drafts and examples.
.md files carry YAML frontmatter between two --- lines, then a Markdown body.

Labs

Location: data/labs/<pi-name>.yml. Member labs must be in a Greater Bay Area city (Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Macau, Zhuhai, Foshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Zhaoqing); affiliate labs may be anywhere.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
pi	text	Yes	Latin script
pi_native	text	No	Any script
lab	text	No	Site shows “PI Lab” if absent
institution	text	Yes
institution_short	text	No	For chips and filters
department	text	No
city	text	Yes	Must be a listed GBA city when tier is member
tier	member or affiliate	No, default member
website	URL	No
email	email	No	Published if given
scholar	URL	No
github	URL	No
orcid	URL	No	The full address, https://orcid.org/0000-0000-0000-0000; the form accepts the bare iD
profile	URL	No	Any other research profile page
photo	file name	No	Lowercase-with-hyphens plus .webp, .jpg, .jpeg or .png
keywords	list of text	Yes	1 to 8 items, none empty
description	text	No	At most 700 characters
looking_for	text	No	At most 300 characters
joined	date	Yes	Approval date

Minimal complete example:

pi: Jane Doe
institution: Southern University of Science and Technology
city: Shenzhen
keywords:
  - working memory
joined: 2026-09-03

Events

Location: data/events/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md; the id is the whole name without .md. The body is the abstract, optionally followed by a short biography. Never put the meeting link in the file.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
title	text	Yes	Quote it if it contains a colon
type	seminar, workshop, summer-school, hackathon, journal-club or other	No, default seminar
date	date	Yes	First day
end_date	date	No	Multi-day events; must not be before date
start	time	No
end	time	No	Not allowed without start
speaker	text	No
speaker_native	text	No
speaker_affiliation	text	No
speaker_url	URL	No
junior_speaker	object	No	Sub-fields: name (required), affiliation, title
host_lab	text	No	Id of a file in data/labs/
host_institution	text	No	Fallback when host_lab is absent
location	text	No, default Online	Or a room and campus
platform	text	No
registration_url	URL	No
recording	object	No	Optional URL sub-fields: bilibili, youtube, other
slides_url	URL	No
materials_url	URL	No

Minimal complete example:

---
title: A normative model of auditory prediction errors
date: 2026-10-29
start: "16:00"
end: "17:00"
---

The abstract goes here.

Tutorials

Location: data/tutorials/<slug>.yml. An index entry; the material stays where its authors host it.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
title	text	Yes
authors	list of text	Yes	At least one, none empty
lab	text	No	Id of a file in data/labs/
format	notebook, slides, video, course, book, software, dataset or other	No, default other
level	introductory, intermediate or advanced	No, default introductory
language	English, Chinese, Bilingual or Other	No, default English
url	URL	Yes
doi	text	No	Not checked
topics	list of text	Yes	1 to 8 items, none empty
description	text	No	At most 700 characters
added	date	Yes

Minimal complete example:

title: Fitting drift-diffusion models
authors:
  - Jane Doe
url: https://github.com/doelab/ddm-tutorial
topics:
  - decision making
added: 2026-09-03

Positions

Location: data/positions/<slug>.md. The body describes the project and how to apply.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
title	text	Yes
type	phd, postdoc, research-assistant, faculty, internship or other	No, default other
lab	text	No	Id of a file in data/labs/
pi	text	No
institution	text	Yes
city	text	Yes	Any city; no GBA check
url	URL	No
contact_email	email	No
posted	date	Yes
deadline	date	No	“Open until filled” if absent
expires	date	No	Hides the listing; defaults to deadline

Minimal complete example:

---
title: Postdoctoral fellow in computational neuroscience
institution: Southern University of Science and Technology
city: Shenzhen
posted: 2026-09-03
---

Two or three sentences and a link to the full advertisement.

News

Location: data/news/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md. The body is the text.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
title	text	Yes
date	date	Yes	Newest first on the site

Minimal complete example:

---
title: The network is forming
date: 2026-09-03
---

One or two paragraphs.

Docs

Location: docs/<slug>.md. The Documents page lists public docs, then coordinator docs, sorted by order then title; only public docs appear on the About page.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
title	text	Yes
summary	text	No	Shown on the Documents page
audience	public or coordinators	No, default public
order	whole number	No, default 100	Lower comes first

Minimal complete example:

---
title: Speaker kit
---

The text of the document.

Network settings

Location: data/network.yml, one file edited by coordinators and parsed once at build time; it is not a collection.

Field	Type	Required	Notes
name	text	Yes	Full name of the network
short_name	text	Yes
acronym	text	Yes
name_native	text	No
tagline	text	Yes
mission	text	Yes
status_banner	text	No	Banner on every page; plain HTML allowed
founded	whole number	Yes	Year
contact_email	email or empty	No, default empty	Empty falls back to GitHub issues
repo_url	URL	Yes	Builds the issue-form links
seminar	object	Yes	Sub-fields: slot and platform (required), fallback_platform, recording_note
coordinators	list of people	No, default empty	Each person: name, institution, role (required), name_native, url (a URL)
host_institutions	list of text	No, default empty

A minimal file has name, short_name, acronym, tagline, mission, founded, repo_url and a seminar block with slot and platform.

Drafts and examples

An entry with draft: true is validated like any other but never published, not even in the calendar feed or on a poster. Each data folder holds an example draft such as data/labs/example-lab.yml. To add an entry by hand, copy the example, rename it, fill it in and delete the draft: true line. Leave the examples in place.

How validation works

The build checks every file against its schema. If one field fails, the build stops, the pull request check turns red and nothing is published. The error names the collection and entry, then the field path and a message; for an unquoted time it reads roughly: events, 2026-10-29-example-seminar, data does not match collection schema; start: Use 24-hour HH:MM, quoted, e.g. “16:00”. A member lab outside the region fails on city with the allowed cities listed; a bad URL or email is reported as invalid; a missing required field as required. Fix the named field and push again. A mistake in data/network.yml stops the build the same way. Unknown fields are ignored. Defaults apply only when a field is absent, not when it is left empty.

Photos

A lab photo is a square head-and-shoulders image at public/photos/<lab-id>.webp, named after the lab file. The intake workflow makes it from the form’s attachment: 400 by 400, WebP, metadata stripped. By hand, keep it under 100 KB and put the same name in the lab’s photo field. The schema checks only the name pattern, not that the file exists, so a typo gives a broken image rather than a build error. Licence and consent rules are in Privacy and consent.

References between files

host_lab (events) and lab (tutorials, positions) hold a lab id, the lab’s file name without .yml. The schema does not check that it exists. If it does, the page shows the lab name and institution from the lab file; if not, the site falls back to host_institution (events) or institution (positions), and a tutorial shows no lab. A misspelled id is silent, so check the labs list for the exact id first.

Dates, times and the weekly rebuild

All times are Hong Kong Time (UTC+8, no daylight saving). An event ends at end on its last day. A single-day event with a start but no end ends one hour after it starts; otherwise, with no end, it ends at the end of its last day. It counts as upcoming until then. A position is listed until one day after expires, or after deadline if there is no expiry; with neither it stays until removed.

These lists are computed at build time. The site is rebuilt on every merge and every Monday, so an event can stay under upcoming, or a position remain visible, for up to a week. Nothing needs fixing; the calendar feed and the events and positions pages update together at the next build.