Keep a family dashboard up to date

Keep my family dashboard up to date. Run once a week.

Assume you have no memory of any previous run.

FIRST, LOOK BEFORE YOU ASK
Open my dashboard folder and read the notes file and the content file
right through. Most of what you need is already written down: who the
children are, which school each one is at, their year groups, and
everything recorded so far.

Two things will not be in there on the first run, so ask me:
- Which emails carry the news. For each one: what it is called, who it
  comes from, and which child it covers.
- Which calendar each strand belongs in, if you can reach my calendars.

Write my answers into the notes file so you never have to ask again. A
weekly task that interviews me every week is worse than no task at all.
On every run after the first, read them from there and get on with it.

Then, on the first run only, tell me in a few lines what you understood
— the children, the schools, the sources, the calendars — and wait for
me to correct you before you touch anything.

Match senders on the domain rather than the whole address. Automated
senders often change the part before the @ between sends, and matching
the full address means you silently stop finding them.

Any, all or none of the sources may have arrived in a given week. Handle
each on its own. A source with no mail is never a reason to skip the
others.

STEP 1 — READ THE MAIL
Search my mail for each source over the last eight days. Keep the window
that short: a wide date range combined with a sender filter is slow and
often times out.

If nothing arrived from any source, say so in one line and stop. Do not
edit anything, do not rebuild, do not publish.

STEP 2 — GET AT THE REAL CONTENT
Most of what matters is not in the text of the email, and this is the
step that gets skipped.

Schools send these in very different ways. Some write plain text. Some
put the dates inside flyer images, where reading the text of the email
alone misses them and you may see only placeholder characters where the
pictures were. Some link out to a newsletter page, a PDF, or a parent
portal. Some do a mixture, and change it from one term to the next.

So do not assume which. For every email, check whether anything is
carried in an image or behind a link, and read that too.

Where there is a "view in browser" link, open it and read the rendered
page including the pictures. Where text extraction comes back empty on a
flyer, look at it as an image and read it that way. Where the content is
in a PDF, download it and read the text out of it rather than paging
through it in a viewer.

If a flyer or a PDF will not open, say which one specifically. Never
guess what it probably said.

Expand any shortened link before you record it or trust it. A real one
resolves to the school's own domain, the newsletter service, or a
sign-up site. Anything else, tell me instead of putting it in my
calendar.

STEP 3 — DECIDE WHAT IS RELEVANT, PER CHILD
A newsletter usually carries items for several year groups at once, so
much of what is in it will not be for my child. Sort it per child using
the year groups in my notes file, and never let one child's item appear
under another's name.

Include their year group, whole-school events, holidays and calendar
changes, deadlines, testing dates, picture days, open houses, parents'
evenings, schedule changes, closures, and anything about transport,
lunch or the daily routine.

Leave out anything aimed at other year groups. Events for older or
younger children read as relevant and are not. If my notes name the
other year groups at that school, use them.

Then, for all of them:
- Never assume one child's rules apply to another, even when the schools
  look similar. Absence procedures, dress codes and phone rules are set
  per school.
- Check every date against the weekday it claims. If a flyer says
  "Thursday the 24th", confirm the 24th really is a Thursday. Flag a
  mismatch rather than picking one.
- Record who actually has to attend, not just that the event exists.
  Where it involves me as well as a child, say which of us, or both.
- If an email states a deadline, a cost, or something to bring, capture
  that alongside the date. The date on its own is rarely the useful part.

STEP 4 — CHECK WHAT IS ALREADY THERE
These sources repeat themselves. A newsletter will re-run the same flyer
for weeks. If my notes record that I removed something or decided
against it, leave it alone. Re-adding something I deliberately took out
is a real failure, and from the outside it looks like the routine is
broken.

Then check for duplicates in both places: the calendar over that date
range, and the content file. If a source updates something already
recorded — a new time, a changed venue, a cancellation, a correction —
change the existing entry rather than adding a second one, and say in
your report that you changed it.

When two sources disagree, prefer the newer and more specific one. A
dated newsletter usually beats a page on a website that may not have
been touched in a year. But tell me there was a conflict, which source
you used, and why. Do not resolve it silently.

STEP 5 — PUT THE CLEAR ONES IN MY CALENDAR
Add events where the date is unambiguous and it clearly applies, using
the calendars recorded in my notes. Never mix strands. Title events
plainly; the calendar already carries whose they are.

Put the venue in the location field. In the description, say which
source and which issue it came from, plus anything still unresolved.
Where a time is given, set a reminder the day before and an hour before.
Where no time is given, make it an all-day event and say "no time
listed" in the description.

If a calendar you were told to use is missing, stop and ask. Do not
improvise a destination, and do not create a new one.

If you cannot write to my calendars at all, or each write needs me to
confirm it and I am not there, do not stall. List the events instead, in
a form I can add myself, and say that is why.

STEP 6 — UPDATE THE DASHBOARD
Content goes in the content file only. Never hand-edit the generated
output.

Every event must be tagged with the child it belongs to, or as belonging
to the whole household. If you cannot tell which, ask me rather than
choosing. An untagged item silently attaches itself to whoever the file
happens to default to, and then reads as theirs.

Watch the wording on shared items. Anything tagged to the whole
household shows on every child's page, so its note must not state one
school's rule as though it were everyone's.

Keep the lists readable. Where several small things cluster together,
group them into one entry with the detail in the note instead of adding
a row each. Where a minor item falls on the same day as a real event,
fold it into that event's note.

If a figure can only be seen somewhere I have to log into, leave it
blank and mark it as not reported. Never write a number you worked out
yourself, and never treat "not reported" as zero.

Then rebuild the site so the published version matches what you changed.
Editing the content file alone changes nothing anyone can see, and it
fails silently with no error.

Do not publish it. Rebuild, then stop and tell me it is ready, and I
will put it live myself. Publish only if I have told you to in writing,
here in this prompt. Never decide that for yourself, however small or
obviously correct the change looks.

STEP 7 — DO NOT DO THESE ON YOUR OWN
Put each of these in your report as a question instead:
- Anything ambiguous: an unclear date, an unclear which-child, two
  sources disagreeing.
- Anything involving money, permission, or signing a person up for
  something. Tell me what needs registering. Do not register.
- Anything that contradicts what is already recorded. Flag the conflict
  rather than resolving it yourself.

Also tell me about collisions I would want to catch: two events the same
evening at different places, a deadline falling inside a holiday, a
costume day landing on a photo day, one child's event clashing with the
other's.

WHAT TO SEND ME
Short and concrete, in this order:
  1. Which sources had mail, and which did not.
  2. What you added.
  3. What you changed, and what it was before.
  4. What you removed, and why. Never remove anything quietly.
  5. What needs me: the questions from step 7.
  6. Whether the site is rebuilt, and whether it is live or waiting on
     me.

Name any flyer or PDF you could not read. If nothing arrived, one line
is the whole report. A quiet week is a normal result, so do not pad it.