Hand-Edited YAML Order Breaks Test

Hand-Edited YAML Order Breaks Test | Generated by AI

Home 2026.05

Root cause

Two layers conspire here:

1. scripts/create/file.py template has no prompt field. The template emits keys in this order: audio, generated, image, lang, layout, title, translated — already alphabetical, no prompt. So the freshly created file is fine.

2. prompt was added by hand later, appended after title. At some point you (or an editor) added the translation hint:

prompt: Do not translate specific items such as project names...

right after title:. Alphabetically prompt belongs between layout and title, not after it. That single hand-edit broke the ordering — and it’s why the test flags exactly one misplaced key (title appearing where prompt should be).

Why translated copies don’t fail this test: scripts/translation/markdown_translate_client.py:54 runs the dict through yaml.dump(...), which sorts keys alphabetically by default. So -zh.md, -ja.md, etc. come out correctly ordered. But the source -en.md is never round-tripped through yaml.dump, so the hand-edited order is preserved verbatim.

Why both _posts/en/... and original/... fail: They’re the same file moved by publish.py:78 (shutil.move) — publish.py doesn’t normalize frontmatter. The bad order propagates.

Fix options

Quick fix (just this file): move the prompt: line in both original/ and _posts/en/ copies to sit between layout: and title:.
Permanent fix: either add a prompt: "" placeholder slot in scripts/create/file.py template (alphabetical position), or have publish.py normalize key order via yaml.dump before moving the draft.

Want me to apply the quick fix to the two files, the permanent fix in publish.py, or both?

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