docs: implementation plan for the uscogdata 0.1.0 public release

Ten tasks, 58 steps, TDD throughout. Tasks 1-3 fix the P0 (manifest
enumeration, working default URL, and the live-corpus test whose absence
let the defect survive); 4-7 are metadata and packaging; 8-10 rewrite
README, NEWS and CONTRIBUTING.

Distribution mechanics stay out of scope -- r-universe publishes check
results on registration, so it comes after final verification is green.

specs/2026-08-08-public-release-design.md

@@ -0,0 +1,286 @@
+# `uscogdata` 0.1.0 — public release
+
+**Date:** 2026-08-08 · **Status:** design, awaiting approval
+**Scope:** release-readiness, README, NEWS. Distribution mechanics recorded here as
+decided, sequenced after the package is clean.
+
+`uscogdata` is feature-complete and the corpus it reads has been public on
+HuggingFace since 2026-08-07 (294 downloads as of this writing). The API built on
+it is live. What does not exist is a public *package*: the repo is private, there
+is no install path, and — measured, not assumed — **a stranger who installed it
+today could not read the corpus at all.**
+
+This spec covers making that untrue.
+
+## Decisions locked
+
+| Decision | Choice |
+|---|---|
+| Canonical source | `gitea.civilytics.org/Civilytics/uscogdata`, flipped public |
+| Public mirror | `github.com/civilytics/uscogdata` — issues, PRs, multi-OS check, CDN |
+| Mirror mechanism | Gitea Actions non-force `git push` (not a push mirror) |
+| Binaries | `civilytics.r-universe.dev`, registry pinned to a release tag |
+| Author of record | Jared E. Knowles `<jared@civilytics.com>`, ORCID `0000-0003-0005-9478` |
+| Copyright | Civilytics Consulting LLC (`cph`, `fnd`) |
+| License | MIT (package) · CC-BY-4.0 (corpus) |
+| Corrections intake | Deferred — see *Out of scope* |
+| Other packages | Parked until this one walks the path end to end |
+
+## P0 — the corpus is unreachable
+
+Two independent faults, either of which alone is fatal.
+
+**No corpus URL exists.** `R/config.R` defaults to the literal
+`REPLACE_WITH_SHARE_TOKEN` sentinel, and no file in the repo supplies a working
+one. A new user calling any verb gets `uscogdata_url_not_configured` with no path
+to resolution.
+
+**Remote reads are broken regardless.** Every partitioned view globs:
+
+```sql
+FROM read_parquet('{url}data/long/**/*.parquet', hive_partitioning = true)
+```
+
+DuckDB 1.5.5 refuses globs over generic HTTP. Its suggested
+`allow_asterisks_in_http_paths` escape hatch does not help — it forwards the
+literal `**/*` as a filename and 404s, because plain HTTP exposes no directory
+listing to expand against.
+
+The package therefore works only against a **local path**. That is how the API
+runs it (`CORPUS_HOST_PATH` is a host mount on maxwell) and how the tests run
+(bundled fixture), which is why the fault went unnoticed. The README's headline
+claim — *"Reads the published corpus directly from Nextcloud via DuckDB httpfs —
+no local bulk downloads required"* — is currently false.
+
+### Fix: enumerate from the manifest, do not glob
+
+`manifest.json` already lists every partition under `files.long_partitions[]`
+with `path`, `year`, `sha256`, `row_count` and `size_bytes` — 56 of them.
+Substituting an explicit file list for the glob was measured against the
+published corpus on 2026-08-08:
+
+| Path | Result |
+|---|---|
+| `https://…/data/long/**/*.parquet` (default) | error — globs unsupported over HTTP |
+| same, `allow_asterisks_in_http_paths = true` | error — literal `**/*` 404s |
+| `hf://datasets/civilytics/us-cog-finance/…` glob | 46,148,034 rows |
+| **explicit list over plain https** | **46,148,034 rows** |
+
+`hive_partitioning = true` still recovers `year` from the paths under
+enumeration, so no downstream view or verb changes.
+
+Enumeration is preferred over `hf://` deliberately. It is **host-agnostic** —
+Nextcloud, HuggingFace, or any static server take the same code path — where
+`hf://` would tie the default to one vendor's protocol and still need
+special-casing, since manifest fetching goes through `httr2`, which cannot speak
+`hf://`. Enumeration also *removes* a dependency (globbing) rather than adding
+one, and the manifest's per-file `sha256` becomes available for integrity
+checking later.
+
+Views are registered from `inst/sql/` with `{url}` substitution in
+`R/views.R:.register_views()`. The list must be built once per session from the
+already-fetched manifest and substituted the same way, so the change is confined
+to view registration and does not touch verb code.
+
+### Fix: ship a working default
+
+`R/config.R`'s default becomes the public HuggingFace `resolve/main/` URL:
+CC-BY-4.0, no token to publish, CDN-backed, and it keeps maxwell's uplink out of
+the path — the same reasoning behind the GitHub mirror and r-universe.
+
+This means `library(uscogdata)` followed by a verb works with **zero
+configuration**, which is what makes the package demonstrable in a README and
+later in a post. `USCOGDATA_URL` and `options(uscogdata.url=)` continue to
+override, so the Nextcloud copy and local mirrors are unaffected.
+
+The `uscogdata_url_not_configured` error class stays — it still fires for an
+explicitly-set empty or placeholder URL — but ceases to be the default
+experience.
+
+### Consequence: `cog_mirror()` is promoted
+
+Measured cost of the remote default, from efron on a good connection:
+
+| | |
+|---|---|
+| Whole corpus | **190.6 MB**, 56 partitions, 46,148,034 rows, FY1967–FY2024 |
+| One government, one year | 1.5 s |
+| One government, all 56 years | 2.8 s |
+| Disk written | **0.00 MB** — range requests only; `external_file_cache` is in-memory |
+
+Nothing persists locally beyond the shared `httpfs` extension in `~/.duckdb` (a
+few MB, once per machine, across all DuckDB use). Costs are RAM and per-query
+bandwidth, since nothing caches between sessions.
+
+Those timings are raw scans. Real verbs additionally join crosswalks, resolve
+categories and assemble provenance, so end-to-end verb latency will be higher and
+**must be re-measured once the fix lands** — it cannot be measured today.
+
+The corpus being only 190.6 MB makes `cog_mirror()` a first-class option rather
+than a developer footnote. The README presents **both paths**:
+
+- **Remote (default, zero setup)** — trying it out, teaching, one-off questions.
+- **Mirrored (`cog_mirror()`, 190 MB once)** — repeated or heavy analysis,
+  offline work, reproducibility, or preferring not to depend on HuggingFace.
+
+The second is also the honest answer to the vendor-dependency question raised by
+defaulting to HuggingFace: **the escape hatch is one function call and 190 MB**,
+after which no analysis touches an external service. The README says so
+explicitly. That is the difference between a convenience default and lock-in.
+
+## Release-readiness fixes
+
+| # | Issue | Fix |
+|---|---|---|
+| 1 | `MaxCorpusSchema: 5` in DESCRIPTION; `.validate_schema()` accepts `4,5,6,7`; published corpus is **7** | `MaxCorpusSchema: 7` |
+| 2 | `^vignettes$` in `.Rbuildignore` — both vignettes absent from the installed package, while README tells users to run `vignette("total-spending")` | Remove `^vignettes$`, `^doc$`, `^Meta$`. Both vignettes build offline (`total-spending` reads the bundled fixture; `population-denominators` is `eval = FALSE`) |
+| 3 | `_pkgdown.yml` reference index covers 6 of 14 exports — pkgdown errors on missing topics | Add `cog_categories`, `cog_explain`, `cog_find_peers`, `cog_geographic_rollup`, `cog_manifest`, `cog_mirror`, `cog_peer_compare`, `cog_recipes`; set `url:` |
+| 4 | No `URL:` / `BugReports:` in DESCRIPTION | Add both, pointing at the GitHub mirror |
+| 5 | No `LICENSE.md`; `LICENSE` holder reads `Civilytics` | `usethis::use_mit_license("Civilytics Consulting LLC")` |
+| 6 | README instructs stripping the fixture at release | Delete that section — see below |
+| 7 | `Authors@R` is an org with no human | Jared E. Knowles `aut`/`cre` + ORCID; Civilytics Consulting LLC `cph`/`fnd` |
+
+**On #6.** The advice to add `^inst/extdata/fixture_corpus$` to `.Rbuildignore`
+is CRAN-sized thinking (5 MB limit) and this package is not going to CRAN.
+Stripping the 15 MB fixture would break `total-spending.Rmd`, which reads from
+it, and would leave r-universe and GitHub Actions unable to run the 28 test files
+without a corpus credential. **The fixture is what lets `R CMD check` pass
+anywhere with zero secrets** — precisely what public CI needs. It ships.
+
+## README
+
+The current README addresses someone standing inside the repo tree: status reads
+"Under active development (Phase 2 of the cog_pipeline project)", it points at
+`../cog_pipeline/docs/reader-specification.md`, the install line is commented
+out, and developer, testing and release sections sit above anything a user needs.
+
+Restructured around a stranger, in this order:
+
+1. **What this is** — one paragraph, and what the corpus covers (types 0–3,
+   FY1967–FY2024, 46M rows, 190.6 MB).
+2. **Install** — r-universe first (binaries), git second.
+3. **Quickstart that actually runs** — resolve a government, get its history,
+   print provenance. No configuration step.
+4. **Two ways to read the corpus** — remote default vs `cog_mirror()`, with the
+   measured numbers and the independence note.
+5. **Amounts are in full US dollars** — kept near the top. This is the errata
+   most likely to produce a wrong answer that looks plausible.
+6. **Concepts** — primary/direct/total spending, general/total revenue,
+   coverage. Condensed, linking to the vignettes for the full treatment.
+7. **How to cite** — `citation("uscogdata")`, corpus CC-BY-4.0 attribution.
+8. **Contributing** — canonical-on-Gitea PR flow.
+
+Developer notes, testing instructions and release procedure move to
+`CONTRIBUTING.md`. Every path reference to a sibling repo is removed or replaced
+with a URL that resolves for someone who has only this repo.
+
+## NEWS.md
+
+The current NEWS is a pre-release churn log: changes described relative to states
+no user has seen ("Breaking: corpus schema_version 4", "the package now
+requires…"), newest-first across the package's entire pre-release development
+(2026-04-23 to 2026-08-04, 140 commits). To a newcomer evaluating whether to
+depend on the package, it reads as instability.
+
+**0.1.0 is rewritten as an initial release**: what the package does, what the
+corpus covers, and the caveats that are genuinely load-bearing. The pre-release
+history is not preserved in NEWS — it is in git, where it belongs.
+
+The substantive content is migrated, not deleted. These are hard-won and belong
+in documentation rather than buried in a changelog:
+
+| Content | Destination |
+|---|---|
+| Coverage disclosure on multi-government aggregates (census vs sample years) | README concepts + `cog_geographic_rollup()` docs |
+| `complete = TRUE` three-way absence semantics (`reported` / `census_zero` / `not_reported`) | `cog_spending()` / `cog_revenue()` docs |
+| Series-break and corpus-break surfacing | README + `cog_explain()` docs |
+| $1,000s → full dollars conversion | README, already prominent |
+| Per-year F-33 population denominators | `population-denominators` vignette, already there |
+
+This also makes NEWS reusable as raw material for the release announcement,
+which is the stated downstream purpose.
+
+## Distribution mechanics
+
+Recorded as decided; executed after the package is clean and checks are green.
+
+**Sequence matters.** r-universe publishes check results the moment a package is
+registered. Registering before the fixes above land means a red badge on day one,
+which is a worse first impression than a week's delay.
+
+1. `gitleaks` over full history. A coarse grep found nothing across 140 commits
+   and the default corpus URL is still the placeholder sentinel, but a proper
+   scan is the gate on an irreversible action.
+2. Flip the Gitea repo public. Disable Gitea issues on it, so there is exactly
+   one inbox.
+3. Create `github.com/civilytics/uscogdata`. Add `.github/workflows/` for the
+   Windows/macOS/Linux `R CMD check` matrix — the platforms the Gitea runner
+   cannot provide, and which this package has never been tested on despite
+   depending on duckdb and httr2. Gitea reads `.gitea/workflows`, GitHub reads
+   `.github/workflows`; both live in one tree without colliding.
+4. Gitea Actions workflow pushing to GitHub **without `--force`**, so divergence
+   fails loudly in CI rather than silently overwriting.
+5. Add `jared@civilytics.com` as a verified secondary email on the GitHub
+   account — r-universe links maintainer identity by matching DESCRIPTION's email
+   against registered GitHub emails, and the association only takes effect on the
+   next build.
+6. Tag `v0.1.0`. Create `github.com/civilytics/civilytics.r-universe.dev` with a
+   `packages.json` pinned to the tag, pointing at the GitHub mirror rather than
+   Gitea so clone traffic stays off maxwell. Install the r-universe app.
+
+### PR flow
+
+Never press Merge on GitHub. A merge there is overwritten by the next sync, the
+PR still displays "Merged", and nothing says otherwise.
+
+```sh
+git remote add github https://github.com/civilytics/uscogdata.git
+git config --add remote.github.fetch '+refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/github/pr/*'
+git fetch github
+git switch -c pr-42 github/pr/42      # test
+git switch main && git merge --no-ff pr-42
+git push origin main                   # Gitea -> mirror -> GitHub
+```
+
+GitHub auto-closes a PR as merged once its head commit becomes an ancestor of the
+base branch, so `--no-ff` — which preserves the contributor's SHAs — makes the PR
+close itself when the mirror pushes. **For external PRs, merge; do not squash or
+rebase.** Squashing rewrites the SHAs, the auto-close never fires, and closing by
+hand reads to a first-time contributor as rejection.
+
+`CONTRIBUTING.md` states this, and a GitHub Action comments it on incoming PRs.
+No CLA; no DCO.
+
+## Verification
+
+The release is not done until all of these pass:
+
+1. `R CMD check --as-cran` clean on Linux, and on Windows and macOS via the
+   GitHub matrix. This package has never been checked on the latter two.
+2. Full test suite (28 files) green against the **bundled fixture**, offline,
+   with no credentials — the property public CI depends on.
+3. Full test suite green against the **live corpus**, which additionally
+   exercises the enumeration fix that the fixture's local path cannot.
+4. `pkgdown::build_site()` completes.
+5. Both vignettes present in the built tarball and
+   `vignette("total-spending", package = "uscogdata")` resolves from an
+   installed copy.
+6. **Cold-start check on a machine that has never seen this package:** install
+   from r-universe, `library(uscogdata)`, run the README quickstart verbatim with
+   no environment variables set. This is the only test that catches the P0 class
+   of fault, and its absence is why the fault survived.
+7. End-to-end verb latency re-measured against the live corpus and the README's
+   numbers updated if they moved.
+
+## Out of scope
+
+- **Corrections intake.** Deferred by decision. Consequence: the release cannot
+  invite data-error reports or make the "traceable and correctable" claim that
+  most distinguishes this corpus from Census's own files. `BugReports:` points at
+  package issues only. A verified correction should eventually terminate as a
+  `lineage_event` or `series_break` row so it propagates through provenance to
+  every consumer — that design is unstarted.
+- **Announcement posts.** Deferred. The API announcement is gated on corrections
+  landing and merits a Civic Pulse edition.
+- **The rest of the R package backlog.** Parked until this one completes the path.
+- **`cog_pipeline` publication.** Stays private.