July 2026 Development Report

Reporting period: Jun 8 – Jul 7, 2026 Sources: #629, #632, #634, #638, #639 Contributors: T. Daniel, C. Aitken

Executive Summary

July focused on infrastructure preparation and platform hardening, with 32 tasks completed across 73 code commits at a 53% completion rate. The team selected Terraform as the infrastructure-as-code framework and produced initial deployment scripts, advancing the goal of making Equalify deployable by any institution. Significant stability work included completing the stale blockers migration to resolve the 20-million-record performance bottleneck, delivering dark mode, refactoring hardcoded configuration values to a centralized environment file, and adding AI disclosure language to LLM-generated blocker summaries.

Highlights

• Selected Terraform as the infrastructure-as-code framework and created initial deployment scripts, establishing the foundation for institutional self-deployment
• Completed the stale blockers migration, resolving the 20-million-record database performance bottleneck identified in last month's analysis
• Delivered dark mode, providing users with a low-light interface option for improved accessibility and comfort
• Refactored all hardcoded configuration values to a centralized environment file, a prerequisite for multi-institution deployment
• Added AI disclosure language to LLM-generated blocker summaries, ensuring transparency about machine-generated content as discussed at the May DASE meeting

Key Metrics

Completed Work

Team

• Selected Terraform as the infrastructure-as-code framework after evaluating available options and tradeoffs.
• Resolved performance lag in the Audit Summary view.
• Improved the Audit table by replacing the hover marker for non-scanned days with a more visually distinct indicator.
• Delivered site onboarding features, including the Lambda-based crawling service, integration into the Build Audit workflow, external linked CSV support for WordPress plugin URL synchronization, and CSV-based user import.
• Addressed outstanding documentation issues.
• Published the May 2026 development report.

T. Daniel

• Fixed table CSS styling issues across the platform.
• Refactored all hardcoded paths, regions, and service names to a centralized environment configuration file.
• Added disclosure language to AI-generated blocker summaries indicating the content is LLM-generated, as discussed at the May 27 DASE meeting.
• Fixed chart label clipping and added commas to tooltip values for improved readability.
• Resolved a duplicate audits display issue.
• Audited and added missing documentation for May features, covering crawl and WordPress plugin integration, LLM summaries, the stats page, and audit sharing and disclaimer functionality.
• Delivered basic dark mode support.
• Created initial Terraform scripts for infrastructure provisioning.
• Produced a version 1 deployment configuration.
• Obtained a clean AWS account for testing infrastructure-as-code deployments.

C. Aitken

• Investigated slow blockers table fetching and identified root performance constraints.
• Completed database schema version control and Hasura metadata version control implementation.
• Conducted detailed view performance investigation and scalability audit.
• Completed the stale blockers migration on production, moving historical blocker data to a separate table and caching scan-level blocker counts, resolving the 20-million-record performance bottleneck.
• Identified and fixed an Unknown URLs bug traced to the stale blockers migration, reported by AHS Marketing Communications.
• Investigated and resolved the audit timeout bug reported in issue #635 by improving scan handling for large audits and increasing the page load timeout to 30 seconds.
• Migrated the frontend build system to Vite 8.0 for improved build performance.
• Added a deprecation notice to the Equalify Reflow WordPress Plugin, directing users toward the current CSV-based integration.

Notable Events

• Team: Selected Terraform as the infrastructure-as-code framework for provisioning Equalify instances, completing the evaluation phase and enabling work on deployment scripts.
• T. Daniel: Obtained a clean AWS testing account to support Terraform script validation and multi-environment deployment testing.
• C. Aitken: Completed the stale blockers migration on production, resolving the performance bottleneck documented in the May 2026 Stale Blocker Analysis.

Risks & Blockers

• Audit timeouts (#635): Resolved during this period by improving scan handling for large audits and raising the page load timeout to 30 seconds; the team will monitor for recurrence.
• Color contrast discrepancy (#637): Equalify and Axe Monitor report significantly different color contrast findings for the same site. Under investigation.
• Clean testing environment dependency: Initial Terraform scripts require a provisioned AWS testing environment for validation; coordination with university IT is in progress.
• Production Hasura URL configuration: The production Hasura endpoint URL requires correction to ensure reliable API access.

In Progress & Upcoming

Development

• Complete follow-up work on remote CSV feed synchronization for audits (issue #628). (C. Aitken)
• Investigate and resolve reported anomalous scan behavior. (C. Aitken)
• Implement semantic versioning with standardized commit message formats and surface current version in the user interface. (C. Aitken)
• Add the Hono framework to the backend API. (C. Aitken)
• Investigate the color contrast findings discrepancy (#637). (C. Aitken)
• Conduct testing and debugging across the platform. (T. Daniel)

Operations

• Continue Terraform script development once testing environment is available. (T. Daniel)
• Provision clean AWS account for infrastructure testing (coordinate with Dean). (C. Aitken)
• Correct the production Hasura URL configuration. (C. Aitken)
• Integrate database schema and Hasura metadata version control into the CI/CD pipeline. (C. Aitken)
• Coordinate meeting with Helen and Michael to align on documentation workflow and communications responsibilities. (C. Aitken)

Newly Identified Work

• Write infrastructure-as-code build scripts to provision all required components (Lambdas, database, service relationships) for an Equalify instance.
• Determine deployment strategy for pushing code updates to provisioned infrastructure.
• Produce technical documentation for provisioning and deployment.
• Create a developer-focused introduction and high-level usage guide for the platform.

Development Activity

Contributor Activity

Active Repositories

Recent Commit Highlights

• Added deprecation pages for the retired WordPress plugin and removed legacy WordPress plugin references from Reflow documentation, guiding users toward the current CSV-based integration.
• Improved Hub resilience by handling GitHub 404 errors gracefully (clearing cache rather than serving deleted content) and simplified the dashboard layout with a cleaner title and configurable URL.
• Updated user documentation comprehensively, adding coverage for shared audit banners, LLM-generated summaries, administration system settings and stats tabs, Build Audit options, and a previously missing section.
• Added per-job PII approval and denial API endpoints to the Reflow service.
• Created partnership documentation and revised the organizational handbook to reflect updated mission, maintenance, and project management details.
• Improved the scanning experience for large audits by increasing the timeout threshold to 30 seconds.
• Upgraded the frontend build tooling to Vite version 8 for improved performance.
• Fixed a bug where URL text was lost when an audit URL row was deleted.

Planned Sprints

FOSS Deployment Sprint (1-2 weeks)

This sprint focuses on making Equalify deployable by any institution on AWS. The team will create Terraform-based build and deployment scripts for provisioning all required infrastructure components, determine how code updates are pushed to provisioned environments, and produce both technical deployment documentation and a developer-focused introduction to the platform.

Design and Maintenance Sprint (1-2 weeks)

This sprint will establish a cohesive visual direction for the platform, including alignment on an overall palette, branding guidelines, a component design system for interface consistency, extended dark mode support, mobile-responsive layouts, and general code and style cleanup. The sprint will also include planning discussions for roll-up reporting across multiple audits and more fine-grained user-to-audit group permissions.