Feature Report: JTD Front Matter

Branch: feature/front-matter PR: #29 — Add JTD front matter to all content pages Date: 2026-03-30 Status: Approved and merged

Summary

Added Just The Docs YAML front matter to all content .md files in the repository. Created a new root index.md as the JTD home page, rewrote README.md as a lean GitHub-facing file, standardized backlinks across all pages, and updated the _config.yml time format. A reusable Python script handled the bulk operation.

What Changed

Files Created

  • index.md — new root home page with layout: home front matter and category link list
  • docs/superpowers/scripts/add_front_matter.py — reusable Python script for bulk front matter operations

Files Modified

  • 144 content pages — full JTD front matter added (title, layout, nav_order, hierarchy, last_modified_date)
  • 5 excluded root files (CONTRIBUTING.md, CONTRIBUTORS.md, STRUCTURE.md, CHANGELOG.md, bs-front-matter.md) — nav_exclude: true + search_exclude: true
  • README.md — rewritten as minimal GitHub-facing file with nav/search exclusion
  • _config.ymllast_edit_time_format changed to "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

Files Untouched

  • CLAUDE.md — orthogonal to JTD
  • docs/superpowers/**/*.md — plugin artifacts, not JTD content

Front Matter Schema

Page Type Layout Hierarchy Fields Example
Root index.md home none (top-level) index.md
Category index minimal has_children: true dotnet/index.md
Subcategory index minimal parent, has_children: true dotnet/parallelism/index.md
Leaf page default parent, grand_parent (depth 3) dotnet/parallelism/managed-threads.md
Excluded root file n/a nav_exclude, search_exclude CONTRIBUTING.md

Key Decisions

  • JTD 3-level nav limit: data/nosql/mongo/ files (depth 3) flattened as level-3 siblings under NoSQL to stay within JTD’s max navigation depth.
  • Directories without index.md: azure/lectures/ and devops/os/ files assigned to the nearest ancestor index (Azure and DevOps respectively).
  • Nav order: Root categories follow the README link order (.NET=1 through DevOps=9). Subfolders sorted alphabetically by H1 title.
  • Last modified dates: Bulk-cached from one git log query, converted to UTC YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS +00:00 format. New files default to 2026-03-30 00:00:00 +00:00.
  • Backlinks standardized: [<](./index.md) for parent, [<<](/index.md) for home. Category index files get only [<<](/index.md).

Commits

SHA Message
5f0a030 feat: create root index.md as JTD home page
5306818 feat: rewrite README.md as lean GitHub-facing file
27492ab feat: update last_edit_time_format to YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
eb89c67 feat: add Python script for bulk JTD front matter
81b633c fix: prevent spurious parent field on category index pages
48accad feat: add JTD front matter to all content pages and fix backlinks

Artifacts

Artifact Path
Design spec docs/superpowers/specs/2026-03-30-front-matter-design.md
Implementation plan docs/superpowers/plans/2026-03-30-front-matter.md
Python script docs/superpowers/scripts/add_front_matter.py
This report docs/superpowers/reports/260330-feature-front-matter.md