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BRC-Analytics Weekly Meeting Prep — Week of March 16, 2026

Context

Dannon is running the weekly BRC-Analytics meeting this week. The plan is to open with a brief narrative retro of the past 7 days, ask about blockers, and then walk through the GitHub project board (galaxyproject/projects/56) as a group.


Part 1: 7-Day Retrospective (March 9–16)

Tweetable Summary

Week of Mar 9: 12 non-merge commits (3 contributors), 10 PRs merged, ~6.2K code LOC (excl. generated data), 10 issues closed — all workflow-first flow. Streak: 3 active days (Mon–Wed). Quiet since Thursday.

Summary Table

Metric Value
Commits to main (non-merge) 12
Contributors 3 (Danielle, Fran, Dannon)
PRs merged 10
Total insertions ~6.2K code + 79K generated JSON
Total deletions ~1.3K code + 79K generated JSON
Issues closed 10
Active days 3 (Mon Mar 10 – Wed Mar 12)
Days since last commit to main 4 (since Mar 12)

Note: raw git stats show 186K+/79K- but ~79K on each side is workflow-assembly-mappings.json regeneration, not real code churn.

The Week's Story

This was a workflow-first week. The entire week was dominated by shipping the new workflow-first analysis flow — the ability to start from a workflow and then select assemblies, rather than the other way around. This was a multi-PR coordinated effort between Fran and Danielle, with Dannon handling infrastructure PRs.

The week had a burst pattern: all activity concentrated Mon–Wed (Mar 10–12), then silence. Three active days, zero commits since Wednesday.

Per-Contributor Breakdown

Fran McDade — Ship of the week. Landed the massive #1183 (workflows entity page & workflow-first analysis flow, 3038+/620-, 135 files) plus 6 supporting PRs: reference assembly selection step, sidebar assembly details, stepper integration, GA2 workflows, no-results state, taxonomy filtering. This is easily 5K+ LOC of new UI work across the entire workflow-first experience. Also has 2 open draft PRs continuing this work (strandedness support, human-friendly taxonomy filters).

Danielle Callan — Followed up Fran's UI work with the data plumbing: built the workflow-assembly mapping system that validates which workflows are compatible with which assemblies at build time (#1187). Generated QC reports, added build-time mapping JSON, and filtered the workflows page to only show valid assemblies. 7 non-merge commits across 2 days.

Dannon — Infrastructure: merged #1096 (env config fallback) and #1118 (mypy type checking for Python). Cut the v0.24.0 release (#1185).

Commit Type Breakdown

feat:      7   (58%)  ██████████████████████████████
fix:       2   (17%)  ████████
refactor:  1   ( 8%)  ████
chore:     2   (17%)  ████████

Healthy feat-dominant mix. Low fix ratio — this was greenfield feature work, not firefighting.

Hotspots (Top Changed Files)

4x  catalog/build/ts/build-workflow-mappings.ts
4x  app/views/WorkflowsView/utils.ts
3x  catalog/build/ts/build-catalog.ts
3x  app/views/WorkflowsView/workflowsView.tsx
3x  scripts/sync-api-brc-analytics.sh

All workflow-related. Very focused work.

Ship of the Week

#1183 — Workflows Entity Page & Workflow-First Analysis Flow (Fran McDade) 3038+/620- across 135 files. New entity page for workflows, explore view with filters, workflow configuration page, reference assembly selection with full modal, assembly selector table, assembly summary, data selector, and truncated text utility. This is the foundation for the new workflow-first UX.

3 Things That Went Well

  1. Coordinated multi-PR feature delivery — Fran broke the massive workflow-first feature into logical, reviewable chunks (#1161 → #1176 → #1178 → #1179 → #1183). Danielle followed with validation. Clean sequencing.
  2. Build-time safety — The workflow-assembly mapping system catches incompatible workflow/assembly combos at build time rather than letting users discover them at runtime. Good defensive design.
  3. Infrastructure hygiene — Dannon snuck in mypy and env config improvements while the feature train was running. Low-risk, high-value.

3 Things to Watch

  1. 4 days of silence — Nothing has landed since Wednesday. Are PRs stuck in review? Is everyone context-switching?
  2. Open review queue growing — 4 non-draft PRs awaiting review (#1194, #1174, #1159, #1069). Some of these are straightforward.
  3. Generated data in git — The 79K-line JSON files in catalog/output/ create noisy diffs. Worth discussing whether there's a better approach long-term.

Part 2: Project Board Review (galaxyproject/projects/56)

Board Overview

Column Count
In Progress 20
Todo 24
Done 391
(no status) 65

500 items total — the board is at the GitHub project item limit. Some cleanup of Done items may be needed.

Issues Closed This Week (10)

All workflow-first related:

  • #1186 Validate workflow-assembly compatibility (d-callan)
  • #1180 Add workflows to GA2 (frano-m)
  • #1177 Compare/filter workflow taxonomy id (frano-m)
  • #1175 No workflows message (frano-m)
  • #1150 Remaining stepper integration (NoopDog/frano-m)
  • #1149 Sidebar assembly details (NoopDog/frano-m)
  • #1148 Assembly selection modal (NoopDog/frano-m)
  • #1147 Reference assembly selection step (NoopDog/frano-m)
  • #1146 Workflow configuration page (NoopDog/frano-m)
  • #1144 Workflows entity page (NoopDog/frano-m)

In Progress — Items to Discuss

P1 (High Priority):

# Title Assignee(s) Notes
#723 ENA picker refinements MFM, NoopDog, frano-m 3 assignees — who's point? Recent activity?
#783 Link from NCBI to BRC Analytics d-callan Status update?
#709 Roadmap NoopDog Ongoing
#710 Regularly updatable DB Backend jdavcs Status?
#982 Learn section updates scottcain Status?

P2:

# Title Assignee(s) Notes
#582 scRNA-Seq workflow errors mvdbeek Long-running — stalled?
#537 Galaxy pages integration NoopDog Depends on mockups (#703 in Todo)
#315 Build diploid variant calling workflow mvdbeek Long-running — stalled?
#804 Integrate LoganSearch dannon, Smeds Status?
#765 LLM prompt on home page dannon, NoopDog, d-callan Status?
#766 LLM prompt for SRA picker dannon, NoopDog, d-callan Status?
#809 Fungal RNAseq workflow nekrut Status?
#815 Mission/vision statements NoopDog, d-callan Status?
#816 Define/track key metrics d-callan Status?

Potentially Stalled / Needs Attention:

# Title Assignee(s) Concern
#691 Fungal gene models from VEuPathDB unassigned No priority, no assignee — should this be in progress?
#718 feat: create range filter (#382) unassigned Appears to be a PR/issue duplicate of #382 — clean up?
#129 Mirror track data from VEuPathDB/UCSC scottcain Old issue — still active?
#382 Create range filter MFM Has open draft PR #718 — check progress
#523 Review workflows for additional filters mvdbeek No priority set
#736 Gene models and community annotations to UCSC scottcain P3, long-running

Todo — Items to Consider

Ready to pick up?

# Title Assignee(s) Priority
#812 Login/Access to users Galaxy API dannon P1 — Dannon's. Ready to start?
#803 Integrate LexicMap dannon, Smeds, kbeavers P1
#726 Expose ENA text search on picker unassigned P1 — needs an owner
#802 Add featured workflow runs unassigned P2 — needs an owner

Stale / Needs Triage:

# Title Notes
#190 Conferences to target on 2025 Year is wrong — still relevant?
#475 Redo analysis of Pv4 dataset nekrut — old, still needed?
#257 Specs for "Comparative page" nekrut — long-lived design item
#577 More detail when accessions don't produce results unassigned — still relevant with new workflow-first flow?
#579 Stepper allows accessions not appropriate NoopDog — possibly addressed by new workflow work?

Unassigned items in Todo (need owners):

  • #792 [GA2] Create help/forum page
  • #577 More detail in workflow stepper
  • #692 Add entry for how to request new genomes
  • #705 Create an assembly (P3)
  • #811 Integrate workflow reports (P2)
  • #817 Define initial target user communities (P1)

Open PRs Needing Review

Ready for review (not draft):

PR Author Title Status
#1194 frano-m fix: remove coming soon flag on workflows page Needs review
#1174 d-callan feat: add more VGP phase 1 assemblies to ga2 Needs review
#1159 dannon feat: add MCP server for catalog and ENA data Needs review
#1069 d-callan feat: updating eukaryote assemblies Needs review — been open a while

Draft PRs (FYI):

PR Author Title Notes
#1195 frano-m make workflow taxonomy filters human-friendly Active — continues workflow work
#1184 frano-m add strandedness support to DE workflow form Active
#1141 scottcain adding youtube section to learn Draft since ?
#1051 Smeds working jbrowse embedding Long-running draft
#940 github-actions update data catalog 2025-11-02 Stale — 4+ months old
#904 Smeds add ga2 bucket file Long-running draft
#894 dannon Galaxy tool execution integration demo Draft/experimental
#718 frano-m create range filter Long-running draft

Part 2.5: Dannon's Items — Talking Points

In Progress

#804 — Integrate LoganSearch (P2, with Smeds)

  • Created Sep 2025, last updated Oct 2025. Empty body, 1 comment.
  • Theme: "Improve data discovery and access." Co-assigned with Smeds.
  • Talking point: What's the current status? Is Smeds actively working on this or is it blocked? Does this need to be deprioritized given other work?

#765 — LLM prompt on the home page (P2, with NoopDog, d-callan)

  • Created Aug 2025, last updated Sep 2025. Has mockups but 0 comments.
  • Shows a search-style LLM interface on the homepage for querying BRC data.
  • Talking point: This overlaps with the MCP server work (#1159) and the AI assistant PR (#1155, already merged). Worth discussing whether the MCP approach changes the scope of this issue — the backend is largely built, it's the frontend UX that needs design work.

#766 — LLM prompt for SRA picker (P2, with NoopDog, d-callan)

  • Created Aug 2025, 1 comment. Has mockups showing text-based search for SRA data.
  • Talking point: Same as #765 — the MCP/assistant infrastructure could serve this. Is this still the right UX direction or has thinking evolved?

Todo

#812 — Login/Access to users Galaxy API (P1, solo)

  • Created Sep 2025, 6 comments, last updated Jan 2026. Well-scoped issue with detailed requirements covering user identity, Galaxy API access, and use cases (listing histories, workflow status, user profile).
  • You already did significant research on this (Keycloak auth testbed, branch keycloak-auth-testbed, documented in ~/.claude/plans/keycloak-auth-testbed/).
  • Talking point: Ready to move to In Progress? What's the timeline? Are there dependencies on Galaxy-side Keycloak/OIDC work?

Open PR

PR #1159 — feat: add MCP server for catalog and ENA data (open since Feb 27)

  • 1541+/5-, 8 files. Embeds an MCP server at /api/v1/mcp in the backend.
  • 12 tools: 10 catalog (organisms, assemblies, workflows, compatibility) + 2 ENA search.
  • 2 comments, 0 reviews. Updated Mar 12.
  • Talking point: This needs a reviewer. It's self-contained (backend only, no frontend changes). Could demo it live if helpful — anyone with Claude Desktop can point at the endpoint.

Draft PR (FYI)

PR #894 — Galaxy tool execution integration demo (draft)

  • Experimental/demo work. Mention if relevant but don't need to drive discussion on it.

Part 3: Suggested Meeting Agenda

Meeting Flow (~30 min)

1. Narrative Retro (5 min) — Dannon presents

  • "This was a workflow-first week. Fran shipped the entire workflow entity page and workflow-first analysis flow across 7 PRs. Danielle followed with workflow-assembly mapping validation that ensures only compatible workflows show up. Dannon did infrastructure (mypy, env config, v0.24.0 release). 10 issues closed, all workflow-related."
  • "All activity was Mon–Wed, nothing since. 4 non-draft PRs sitting in the review queue."

2. Blockers Check (2 min)

  • "Anyone blocked on anything right now?"

3. Review Queue (5 min)

  • Walk through the 4 open non-draft PRs. Assign reviewers or decide to merge.
  • Flag the stale PRs (#940, #904) — close or keep?

4. Board Walk-through (15 min)

  • In Progress: Check each item for movement. Flag the 6 potentially stalled items listed above.
  • Todo: Any items ready to move to In Progress? Assign owners to unassigned P1/P2 items.
  • Housekeeping: Board is at 500 items. Consider archiving completed items.

5. Wrap-up (3 min)

  • Confirm priorities for the coming week
  • Any items for next meeting?

Verification / Preparation

Before the meeting:

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