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Freshness Backbone

  • Purpose: maintainer-facing audit spine for freshness-sensitive content and external-source drift
  • Scope: official links, platform rules, playbooks, workflow pages, route pages, and source-family expansions
  • Doc type: process
  • Owner: repo maintainer
  • Status: active
  • Snapshot established: 2026-04-25
  • Update triggers: quarterly audit, any new contest-source lane, any external-link break, or any wording drift caught by review sweeps
  • Canonical companion docs: Source Map, Expansion Roadmap, Roadmap, Content Blueprint

This file exists so freshness-sensitive content does not rely on memory, ad hoc chat history, or one-off link checks.

What This Governs

Use this backbone for repo surfaces whose recommendations, rules, or official links can drift:

  • practice/contest-playbooks/
  • contest-source clinics and worksheets
  • workflow pages in notebook/
  • route pages in docs/
  • any maintainer plan that points at external study ecosystems

Do not use this page to re-audit evergreen algorithm proofs every quarter. Topic pages still need source-backed writing, but their freshness discipline is lighter and should flow through ordinary review sweeps.

Core Rule

Before calling any freshness-sensitive wave "shipped", verify the relevant official or project-primary sources during that pass and leave a durable trace here or in the governed page.

That means:

  1. verify the current official/project-primary link still exists
  2. confirm the repo wording still matches the source's current role
  3. decide whether the repo should:
  4. keep the existing page as-is
  5. revise wording
  6. add a new drill / clinic / topic
  7. retire or downgrade stale guidance

Audit Cadence

Quarterly Rhythm

  • Q1: first two weeks of January
  • Q2: first two weeks of April
  • Q3: first two weeks of July
  • Q4: first two weeks of October

If a major expansion wave lands between those windows, do a targeted spot-check immediately for the affected source family instead of waiting for the next quarter.

Minimum Pass Types

1. Quarterly Baseline Audit

Run this on every core freshness-sensitive source family.

Deliverables:

  • update the audit table below
  • fix broken links or source-role drift
  • refresh any page-level last reviewed markers that materially matter

2. Wave-Triggered Spot Check

Run this whenever a new contest-source lane, workflow page, or playbook drill ships.

Deliverables:

  • verify only the source family that governs the new wave
  • record the new snapshot date here
  • note any special caveat such as archive-based, official but no syllabus, or community curriculum rather than official rules

3. Sweep-Follow-Up Check

Run this when review sweeps catch wording drift such as:

  • stale "official" claims
  • archive pages described like live ecosystems
  • practice-source labels that are really course/reference links
  • route pages recommending ecosystems the repo no longer supports well

Audit Table

Source family Primary pages to verify Governs these repo surfaces Default cadence Current snapshot Notes
VNOI Wiki wiki.vnoi.info expansion planning, topic-gap comparison, source mining for long-tail algorithms quarterly 2026-04-25 treat as coverage radar and advanced-topic source pool, not as repo law
USACO Guide Advanced usaco.guide/adv expansion planning, advanced sequencing comparisons, topic-gap checks quarterly 2026-04-25 project-primary curriculum, not official USACO rules
CP-Algorithms cp-algorithms.com topic maps, references, implementation/reference sanity for new leaves quarterly 2026-04-25 strongest reference layer for many algorithm pages
IOI syllabus + stats syllabus, stats IOI / OI playbook, olympiad drills, source-backed trend notes quarterly and before olympiad-lane edits 2026-04-25 use syllabus for scope, stats for task-difficulty drift
ICPC WF official pages WF problems, programming environment ICPC playbook, modeling drills, environment/process wording quarterly and before ICPC-lane edits 2026-04-25 prefer official finals/problem/environment pages over regional summaries
Codeforces official ecosystem contest rules, interactive guide, AI rule topic Codeforces playbook, anti-hack workflow, short-round drills, constructive/validator-first clinic quarterly and before Codeforces-lane edits 2026-04-25 official pages are fragmented; preserve the exact page role in wording
Google archive lane coding competitions archive, farewell post, Kick Start retrospective Code Jam / Kick Start clinic, distributed clinic, special-judge/output-protocol guidance quarterly 2026-04-25 wording should stay archive-based, not sound like a live contest circuit
Topcoder official ecosystem SRM support, arena, rated event guide Topcoder clinics, one-hard-problem lane, weird-task lane quarterly 2026-04-25 focus on current official operating guidance, not old forum lore

Page-Type Checklist

Use this when deciding what a newly observed external pattern should become inside the repo.

Make It A Topic Page When

  • the pattern is reusable across many judges and years
  • it has one stable core invariant or theorem
  • the repo can support it with:
  • one starter template or strong exact retrieval route
  • one hot sheet or parent cheatsheet route
  • at least one flagship note

Examples:

  • 2-SAT
  • Centroid Decomposition
  • Chinese Remainder / Linear Congruences

Make It A Playbook Drill Or Clinic When

  • the pattern is mostly about contest behavior, execution, or decision quality
  • the main payoff is process under pressure rather than a reusable standalone algorithm
  • the source is format-specific or ecosystem-specific

Examples:

  • Codeforces short-round shipping
  • IOI checkpoint / score-path planning
  • Topcoder one-hard-problem discipline

Make It A Mixed Round When

  • the skill is about switching, pacing, or composing already-taught topics
  • the underlying topics already have stable teaching and retrieval support
  • the pack can diagnose failure modes better than one more prose page

Examples:

  • ICPC breadth + implementation
  • Petrozavodsk / OpenCup hard mixed

Make It A Hot Sheet Or Workflow Page When

  • the issue is retrieval under pressure
  • the invariant already exists in a mature topic page
  • or the content is an operational loop rather than a new theory lesson

Examples:

  • Anti-Hack Workflow
  • Special Judge / Output Protocol Workflow
  • Chinese Remainder hot sheet

Do Not Add A New Surface Yet When

  • the external pattern is only one-off flavor, not a reusable family
  • the repo has no exact starter, note, or route to support it
  • the same payoff can be captured as one compare-point paragraph in an existing page

Audit Procedure

When you run one freshness pass, do it in this order:

  1. identify the affected source family
  2. open only the official/project-primary pages that govern that family
  3. verify the repo wording at the relevant surfaces:
  4. playbooks
  5. workflow pages
  6. route pages
  7. expansion / source docs
  8. classify each finding:
  9. link drift
  10. role drift
  11. scope drift
  12. new opportunity
  13. patch the governed repo pages
  14. record the snapshot date here if the pass changed meaningfully
  15. if the pass materially changes priorities, patch Expansion Roadmap in the same turn

Findings Taxonomy

Use these labels internally when triaging audit results.

  • link drift: a URL moved, redirected strangely, or no longer represents the intended official source
  • role drift: the page still exists, but the repo describes it with the wrong role, such as calling an archive lane "current"
  • scope drift: the ecosystem now rewards a different skill mix than the repo currently emphasizes
  • new opportunity: a recurring pattern now deserves a topic, clinic, mixed round, or hot sheet

Current Snapshot Summary

The 2026-04-25 baseline pass and first reprioritization pass support these current repo stances:

  • VNOI Wiki, USACO Guide Advanced, and CP-Algorithms are the main coverage radar trio for algorithm-gap discovery
  • IOI should still be treated as syllabus + task-stats + partial-scoring discipline
  • ICPC should still be treated as official environment + breadth + modeling under pressure
  • Codeforces should still be treated as official rules + interactive / anti-hack / upsolve discipline
  • Google contest content must be described as archive-based
  • Topcoder should stay framed around one hard problem, weird-task surfaces, and official operating guidance

2026-04-25 Reprioritization Findings

This pass rechecked the repo's main freshness-sensitive source families and used that review to reprioritize future expansion.

  • no blocker-level link drift was found in the spot-checked source families used by the current contest-system layer:
  • VNOI Wiki
  • USACO Guide Advanced
  • CP-Algorithms
  • IOI stats
  • ICPC WF official pages
  • Codeforces official ecosystem
  • Google coding competitions archive
  • Topcoder SRM / Marathon support pages

Role Drift

  • Google should continue to be written as an archive-based source family, not as a live contest circuit
  • Topcoder Marathon should remain an intro / clinic lane until the repo has exact internal heuristic anchors strong enough to support a deeper learning family
  • Codeforces official pages remain fragmented, so wording should continue to preserve each exact page role instead of flattening them into one generic "official syllabus"

Scope Drift

  • the repo's explicit contest-system backlog is now mature enough that future waves should not open purely from momentum
  • the repo's earlier highest-value canonical gaps have largely been shipped, so the expansion spine should now be treated as audit-driven rather than missing-core-topics-driven

New Opportunity Rule

Open a new expansion wave only when at least one of these becomes true:

  • a quarterly audit finds real scope drift in a tracked source family
  • a review sweep finds a durable retrieval / exact-anchor deficit
  • at least one strong repo-fit flagship anchor appears for a topic or clinic that the repo does not currently support well

Immediate Next Audit Window

Unless a new source-sensitive wave lands first, the next routine freshness pass should happen in:

  • Q3 2026 (first half of July 2026)

If a new contest-source lane lands before then, run a source-family spot-check as part of that wave.