Priors: how India’s governments have handled protests

An open record of how the Indian state acts when different parties hold power. It starts with protest: today's event, set beside how earlier governments of every party handled the same kind of protest. Every claim links to a dated source.

  LIVE EVENT ──► tagged by action type ──► PRECEDENT SHELF (1974 → now)
                                               │
                                               ▼
                               COMPARISON: party × action, in power vs in opposition

Why

Memory is short and the record is long. A new generation sees today's crackdown or today's permission without the thirty cases before it. Priors puts them side by side.

Three rules

1. Every claim links to a dated source. No source, no claim.
2. Every party gets the same columns. The schema enforces symmetry.
3. Describe actions. Do not judge them.

Layout

Path	What
content/precedents/*.yaml	One protest, one government's answer. Hand-written or pipeline-drafted, human-checked.
content/current/*.yaml	Events underway. Added by hand or drafted by the pipeline, marked reviewed: false until checked.
content/SCHEMA.md	The schema and action-type vocabulary.
src/	Next.js static site.
pipeline/ingest.ts	Claude + web search finds recent events, structures them, writes YAML.
pipeline/validate.ts	Command-line wrapper for src/lib/validate.ts. Runs in CI.
tests/	Unit tests for formatting, validation and the counting rules.
docs/	Landscape research and naming notes.

Run

Needs Node 22 (see .nvmrc).

npm install
npm run dev           # http://localhost:3000
npm run build         # static export to out/

Command	What it does
npm run check	Format, lint, typecheck, tests and content validation. Run before a PR.
npm run validate	Schema and source-reference checks on content/.
npm run validate -- --strict	The same, but warnings fail too. CI runs this.
npm test	Unit tests (Vitest).
npm run format	Format with Prettier.

Ingest current events

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...   # or: ant auth login
npm run ingest -- --days 14 --dry   # print, do not write
npm run ingest -- --days 14         # write to content/current/

The site is static and refreshed by hand. "Last updated" dates come from git history. The ingest.yml workflow can be run by hand once the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY repo secret exists. It opens a pull request. Review the sources, set reviewed: true, merge.

Contribute

• Found an error? Open a correction request. Bring a source.
• Missing a precedent? Suggest one, or add it yourself:
  1. Copy the shape in content/SCHEMA.md.
  2. Open every URL you cite.
  3. Run npm run check.
  4. Open a pull request and fill in the checklist.
• Before you start, read CONTRIBUTING.md and the editorial policy.
• Security problem? See SECURITY.md.

Licence

Code: MIT. Content in content/: CC BY 4.0. Quoted sources belong to their publishers. To cite the record, see CITATION.cff.