Degree Explorer rules

Read this file before changing Degree Explorer, its curriculum files, or its planner. These product rules record decisions made with the user; they are not optional styling suggestions. The data/API contract is in degree-requirements.md.

Explaining the running visualization

Shared University, Gen Ed and awarding-college rules live separately from degree-specific rules, using one format and explicit program profiles under institution/<id>/shared_requirements/<year>/. Preserve alternatives, narrower college policies and source conflicts. The initial reference bundle now supplies illustrative Gen Ed coverage and standard upper-credit context. It is not a student audit; grades, transfer, approvals and conditional alternatives remain unevaluated.
Degree totals, Gen Ed areas, college-taught credits, upper-division credits and residence are overlapping constraints. Never add all thresholds or duplicate earned credit. Allocate approved major/Gen Ed overlaps before adding course slots. Unallocated degree capacity is not an identified Gen Ed requirement. Allocate exact selected courses once across base and flexible areas before earmarking remaining areas inside existing allowance credits. Never duplicate credit or treat an open program choice as already selected.
Generate the readable rule list from the same saved catalog rules, courses, alternatives, prerequisite edges, enrollment conditions and policy values used by the selected roadmap. Do not require a second parser or an AI proposal to explain an existing prototype.
Admin > Data & Usage > Catalog Review opens Visualization rules. The graph exposes the same list through Rules behind this plan. Keep one renderer and payload so these views agree; provide a readable CSV download.
Put captured wording and program/course links beside rules. Label each role: recorded catalog policy, displayed course/choice, enforced ordering/budget constraint, or CEDAR planning preference. Recording GPA/admission rules does not mean the scheduler checks student eligibility.
This list explains the prototype and requires no individual approvals. Older parser flags belong in Extraction diagnostics, labeled as parser limits; they are not broken chart rules or a student/advisor approval checklist. Optional future ingestion proposals stay under Draft interpretations.
Label entry routes/concentrations explicitly. Required same-level clinical blocks may contain more than two courses and mixed levels; retain every component, respect the semester maximum, and count actual components in chains.
Preserve catalog gaps visibly. Unknown identities/credits cannot become invented courses. Label provisional credit reservations and timing assumptions. An illustrative clinical sequence is not an approved cohort calendar.

What students should see

Show one degree as a semester board. Use the same interface for every program.
Ask for math and English starting points and show their actual preparation courses. Changes redraw the course sequence immediately.
Resolve math entry routes per program. A placement choice must not impose calculus on a major that only needs general math/statistics. Preserve the placement identifier when changing degrees; update the route and labels. Distinguish a named major math requirement from an illustrative Gen Ed choice.
Keep courses and course groups visible. Do not replace the board with a set of accordions or a requirements table.
A named alternative set must show Choose N of X courses and its course codes on the chart. Show every member when it fits; clamp a long list to three lines with a visible ellipsis, retaining the total count. The popup always shows the complete list, full titles, credits and individual catalog links. Never show one example course as though the program requires that course.
Keep each course code intact when wrapping a preview. Break between options, rather than separating a subject prefix from its number to squeeze in a list.
Store OR alternatives separately from the AND components of a lecture/lab bundle. Unresolved choices remain gray with prerequisites that vary. A single option’s prerequisites, conditions or offering history cannot describe the entire set. Known option-specific prerequisites stay beside that option.
For a shared credit block, show its total and lab/pairing rule on every slot, distinct from that slot’s planned credits. Keep a compact, clamped option preview on the card and the full options in the popup. Group lecture/lab AND components under one OR option; a standalone one-credit lab is not a complete science-course choice. Combined lecture/lab courses remain one option.
The CS science example reserves 4 + 4 + 3 + 3 = 14 credits, with labs in the first two slots. These are unresolved choices, not a selected sequence. Its eleven introductory lecture/combined choices and eight separate labs are enumerated; advanced-science alternatives remain visibly open for review. Do not imply a lab-free fifth course satisfies the required lab pairings, or that the same course can fill multiple slots. Higher-credit choices require workload review; the prototype does not yet select or audit combinations.
Disclose variable credits and mixed course levels. A planning allowance must say how many credits it reserves; selecting an upper-level or higher-credit alternative needs its timing and workload reviewed.
Hovering or keyboard-focusing a course previews both its prerequisite / corequisite chain and courses that depend on it, with a readable preview and matching chart connections. Blue leads in; purple leads out. These are the named courses in the selected route, not every catalog alternative.
Hover is local presentation only: it must never open the enrollment dialog, request history, or change the clicked course’s data. Leaving clears the temporary preview or restores the last clicked chain; an active keyboard focus keeps its own preview. Keep the preview readable when moving into it, and let Escape dismiss it.
Coursework-count / permission conditions retain their diamond label and dotted qualifying pool on hover. Course sets say prerequisites depend on the selection; do not turn those conditions or alternatives into named edges.
Clicking (or pressing Enter/Space) opens a dismissible, keyboard-accessible popup with enrollment and first-day seats first. Catalog links stay at the top; complete requirement evidence, conditions and course-set details remain in the same popup below the history. Each opening starts at enrollment history, even after scrolling. Closing returns focus to the clicked tile. Touch users can open the popup directly without a hover step.
Every semester header has identical height, including wrapped year/term labels and plans longer than eight semesters. First tile rows start at the same height.
Keep Gen Ed, minor and other degree work secondary, but include its workload.
Identified Gen Ed area needs and elective/minor allowances are distinct, course-sized, clickable tiles in the same grid as named courses. Split their existing budget using the institution plan’s usual slot credits; preserve small remainders explicitly as credits left to allocate. Never round up, drop credits, or imply that a one-/two-credit remainder is a complete course. Show actual suggested course credits and whether they fit the allowance; changing the plan still needs review.
Ask whether the first semester is fall or spring, label every term accordingly, and preserve that choice in shared URLs and degree switches. Season labels select historical examples; they do not change prerequisite scheduling or guarantee that named courses will be offered then.
A Gen Ed slot names its area and links to the annual shared rules. Its popup filters the captured area memberships. Elective/minor slots say Any level · Gen Ed not required and include lower- and upper-level undergraduate offerings, with a visible Level column. Keep titles, credits, campus/college/ session, matching-season history, seats and first-day fills. Exclude entry routes, fixed requirements and enumerated pools already represented.
A course can contribute to its major, Gen Ed and college requirements while its degree credits count once. Show Also Gen Ed on selected courses and May also meet Gen Ed on open choices. Open choices never reduce the reported gap; explain that choosing an eligible option can turn a matching Gen Ed slot into elective space. Unlisted language/studio approvals remain open. Do not manufacture memberships or pair unrelated science/lab courses.
Use the structured Gen Ed program’s flexible-area labels for an illustrative allocation, consuming additional courses from different base areas. Mark flexible coverage provisional on cards, in the summary and in readable rules while the recorded policy-numbering discrepancy is unresolved. Placement is not earned credit; an explicit completed-English start proves writing, but does not establish eligibility for the preparation exception.
The standard college upper-credit minimum is an overlapping constraint shown beside the plan, including the amount still to fit in existing elective/minor space. Do not select conditional alternatives automatically or count an entire mixed clinical block as upper level. Generic elective space does not have to be Gen Ed or lower level. An upper-level course with no prerequisites could fit; enrollment data alone cannot establish that it has no prerequisites.
Coverage estimates never change total workload or add Gen Ed on top of the degree minimum. Fit whole area slots into existing semester allowances and preserve remainders. If a need cannot fit, expose it for redistribution; never silently drop it. Shared rules are loaded once per edition at startup and passed explicitly to both Degree Explorer and Admin Visualization rules.
Hovering an allowance explains that no course is selected. Do not invent prerequisite arrows, a green zero-prerequisite rating, or a catalog excerpt for a planning allowance. Its popup links to the relevant area or degree requirements. A missing shared profile leaves generic elective labels and an explicit coverage-unknown note.
Put observed student coursework at Pathways > Course paths, using the shared Pathways population. Never present observed order as a prerequisite.
A completed Course paths run must dismiss its blocking loading dialog and reveal the plot. Use the full session namespace for loading-completion messages from this nested module, including validation and error paths. Browser checks must assert that the dialog closes, rather than merely find a plot rendered behind it (ISSUES.md I31).

Spatial layout

Put early Gen Ed / lower-level option tiles in the top rows, above math, writing and program course sequences. Reserve one shared band across all semesters, sized for the term with the most slots, so the course families below stay aligned. Keep empty positions when a term has fewer options. Render the options first in each semester’s reading and keyboard order. This visual foundation does not establish a prerequisite relationship.
Align related courses horizontally across semesters. ENGL 1110 → ENGL 1120 and the stretch English route each stay in one row; algebra through calculus also stays aligned. Apply the same technique to program sequences and course groups, such as History surveys, accounting and physics sequences.
Author course-family membership as row_group in the institution node file. Never infer it from display labels or invent prerequisites to force alignment. Row membership means related coursework; only catalog-backed arrows establish prerequisite timing. Suggestions keep their distinct styling in every row.
Assign rows after scheduling. Layout must never move a course to another semester, change its credits, or override the 15/16-credit workload policy.
Reserve math and writing rows. Preserve empty positions within a sequence rather than pulling other courses upward. Other families may share a row outside each other’s full semester span to keep the board compact.
Concurrent courses in a family use separate rows. Never overlap, omit, or move a course to make a family fit on one row.
Share row heights across all semester columns, sized to their tallest tile. Wrapped titles and condition badges must stay readable. Keep semester headers equal in height. Place early allowance tiles in the reserved top rows, preserving math/writing rows and interior gaps in every course family below. Later upper-level, minor and elective allowances remain below the aligned rows.
Check actual rendered alignment for ordinary and extended plans, alternate math/English placements, and narrow screens. An assigned row number alone does not prove visual alignment.

Workload and timing

The UNM planning policy is 15 credits usual; 16 credits maximum per semester, including other degree work. The institution plan file supplies those values; no alternate limit is hidden in a renderer.
Extend the plan when needed. Eight semesters is a template, never a constraint that justifies overloading a term, dropping coursework or hiding preparation.
Size the horizon to the whole workload and prerequisite schedule. Fill other requirement allowances toward the usual load first; use the allowed maximum for the remainder within that horizon. Display total planned credits per term.
Prioritize Gen Ed and lower-level foundations in the first two years. Schedule upper-level requirements from semester 5 onward, including upper-level course groups. The plan file supplies this boundary so programs use the same rule. Later-semester allowances identify upper-level, minor and elective work rather than implying Gen Ed is still unfinished. These are planning allowances, not audited Gen Ed or upper-division credit totals.
This timing pattern is a planning preference, not a catalog restriction or a new prerequisite. Preserve the actual prerequisite chain and credit limit; extend the plan if later placement or required sequences need more semesters.
Keep strict prerequisites earlier. Preserve before-or-concurrent timing and keep paired lecture/lab bundles together. Never invent prerequisite edges to explain an authored semester position.
Store course-count and permission conditions separately from named-course edges. A requirement such as two prior upper-level courses can be satisfied by different members of a pool. Schedule enough qualifying slots earlier without claiming that two particular electives, or every pool member, are required.
The current scenario adds preparation to its degree-credit target. Say so. This is a conservative planning assumption, not a blanket finding that every preparatory course is ineligible for degree credit. Reviewed overlap, substitutions and transfer credit can reduce it. CS’s explicit exclusion of mathematics before calculus is recorded as catalog evidence.
Explicitly completed starting courses reduce the remaining degree credit target. Placement or a waiver alone does not award course credit.
Credit targets must cite their source. Conflicting totals remain visibly unresolved; do not quietly pick a new official total. Biology currently uses the Degree Hours field for the example and retains the conflicting grand total.
Admission, specific elective prerequisites, course offerings, transfer and full allocation remain unresolved until encoded. Never call the prototype a validated graduation plan or imply a student is eligible to enroll.

Planning colors and chains

Color means prerequisite planning on the selected route, not difficulty, failure, student readiness, or an eligibility decision.
Green: zero shown prerequisite courses. Yellow: one or two. Red: three or more. Count unique direct and indirect prerequisite courses. Do not count the same ancestor twice when branches converge. A lecture/lab pair represents two courses even though it occupies one tile.
A choice with unencoded course prerequisites is gray, never green by default.
Show aggregate coursework/permission conditions with a purple diamond badge and their actual wording. They do not increase the named prerequisite count. Selecting the course highlights qualifying options with a dotted outline, without drawing named-course arrows from those options.
Mark illustrative Gen Ed courses on the chart as Suggested Gen Ed, with a lighter surface and dashed border. Keep text fully readable; do not fade the whole tile. A named program requirement keeps its solid program styling even when the same course is a suggestion in another program.
Placement removes satisfied preparation from the scenario; explain that these counts concern the displayed route, not every alternative in the catalog.
Show numbers and text alongside color. Every tile shows prerequisite burden and downstream reach. Entry courses clearly identify a chain they start.
Keep chain length separate from ancestor count. Parallel prerequisites are not sequential semesters; concurrent links do not add an earlier semester.
Selecting a course emphasizes both its upstream and downstream connections. Never flatten parallel branches into a misleading single ordered list.

Evidence and annual updates

Interpret complete catalog programs with evidence-bound AI proposals and human review. Retain deterministic source capture/validation; the phrase parser is a diagnostic rather than the primary semantic interpreter. Every source passage needs an explicit coverage decision, including informational prose, so reviewers can detect omissions. Preserve the original response and human revisions separately. Edits reset approvals; new source/prompt/schema inputs need new review. No unreviewed proposal enters the planner or projections. Contract: catalog-normalization.md.
The catalog is the authority. Program pages establish degree requirements; course pages establish prerequisites/corequisites. A course description alone does not establish that the degree requires it.
Cross-check against degrees.unm.edu, recording the academic year and any differences. Use it as a secondary comparison; an older roadmap cannot overwrite the active catalog. Course descriptions remain linked to the individual current catalog pages. Do not assume how another site obtains them.
Each catalog-backed course/group tile has a reason, source page, section path, short exact excerpt, catalog year, retrieval date and review status. Each graph edge has evidence. Keep copied text separate from explanations and planning assumptions.
Show both Degree requirements and Course description links. The selected tile’s evidence must reference the actual requirement or prerequisite section, rather than relying on a generic catalog link.
A general requirement not fully encoded says it is illustrative. Source conflicts and missing coverage are visible; neither means “not required.”
Name the selected concentration or example route. A general-major option explicitly permitted in program text may be shown with the conflicting concentration flag preserved in the source notes. Never silently treat one concentration’s courses as requirements for every version of the degree.
Store the graph as readable institution text files: nodes, selected-route edges, entry routes, program membership, evidence and planning policy. IDs refer to the active catalog year. One active year is served; preserve previous sets in Git rather than mixing editions or overwriting their history.
Review the set annually as one change: obtain the new program/course pages, compare requirements and alternatives, save new excerpts and retrieval dates, review links and credits, then run validation and planner/browser checks. Changing a year/date alone is not an annual review.
Live hash URLs can change with the catalog. The saved year and excerpt record what the graph was built from; a URL alone is insufficient provenance.
Annual source acquisition uses the offline catalog scanner and preserves its complete capture directory. Verify source/artifact hashes and inspect both wording and structure differences. Keep changed extractor/configuration provenance separate from changed catalog language.
Scanner output is unreviewed staging data. Unsupported prose/structures remain explicit review items; no scanner or AI proposal may overwrite approved requirements, invent prerequisite edges or regenerate authored semester suggestions without the applicable review. Contract: catalog-scanning.md.
Admin catalog review must show each flagged excerpt with its full captured section, next review action, field pointer and verified source hash. Preserve list nesting; never send a fragment to an interpreter without its context. Keep source checks separate from interpretation and expose parsed sections for validation too. Opening or exporting a queue never marks anything reviewed or edits the source archive or runtime requirement files.
Preserve supported, tested patterns when reading legacy parser analyses; new semantic interpretations use complete-program AI proposals with human review. Do not maintain an ignore list. Preserve each grade threshold, selection count and its nested course scope, including lecture/lab bundles. Standard grade/list headings do not need separate interpretation flags once parsed; exceptions, unknown children and incomplete lists still do. A flag describes an extraction gap, not necessarily a defect in the catalog. Recognition never implies approval.
Treat class standing and program admission as shared status milestones, separately from named-course prerequisite edges. Keep each use’s source and enclosing AND/OR logic: Junior or Senior must retain both allowed statuses. Never turn Junior alone into Junior-or-higher, 60 credits, or semester 5. Recorded standing is term-specific student_classification; neither elapsed semesters nor pull-stamped cumulative credits establish it. Admission criteria satisfied and admission recorded remain distinct; automatic admission requires explicit program-policy evidence. Extracted gates stay in Catalog Review until the reviewed compiler can add them to runtime plans; recognition alone does not authorize eligibility decisions or automatic semester placement.
The review queue must reuse prepared data when returning to its tab and render controls only for visible rows. Verify review artifacts before cache lookup; verify original source bytes on every Inspect instead of reading the entire archive just to display a page. Label this verification boundary clearly. Keep full verification in the offline scanner and preserve filters on return.
Keep AI interpretations in versioned institution JSON files, with producer, catalog/unit identities, exact citations and complete passage coverage. Stage them through validation into immutable proposals; never infer human approval from staging. For the solo-maintainer workflow, file-exchange UI stays commented out while drafts load automatically. Preserve that backend for future use.
Require one explicit sign-off per complete program/concentration or course unit, rather than clicks for every routine rule and source passage. Show a concise case list for unresolved meaning, conflicts, questions and human flags; do not duplicate one case for every supporting passage. Review the complete comparison initially; focus later detailed work on edge cases and changed language. Edits reopen sign-off, and open cases block reviewed export.
transcribed means saved from the source, not approved by an academic advisor. Preserve conflict until resolved. Human-reviewed rules may be marked reviewed; never infer that status from successful code tests.

Historical availability and pressure

Course popups enrich the plan with descriptive history; history does not move courses or establish prerequisites or future availability.
Use exact course components from degree_roadmap_courses.csv. Show lecture and lab separately. Unresolved choices need a specific course; do not infer equivalences between current identifiers and older course numbers.
For an enumerated alternative set, the single history table may show all options, labelled as alternatives and kept separate by course. Never add their seats or enrollments together as if every option were required.
Use one standard CEDAR Reactable in each popup, with course/campus filters and explicit term, component, campus, college and PoT columns. Keep lecture/lab components separate; do not require switching between little tables.
Show the last nine possible terms through settled enrollment, with seasonal offering counts and typical scheduled seats. A frequency denominator includes all source-covered terms at that campus, including non-offerings. Missing source terms are unknown. No source-covered summer is not a summer zero.
The primary line is seats offered → filled at first class day → first-day fill percentage, followed by pressure/coverage and seasonal frequency. Reuse calc_first_day_enrl(..., by_part_term = TRUE) and the common numeric capacity helper. No census, ever-registered, or DESR enrollment substitution. Missing status/start/pull dates yield unavailable first-day counts.
Near full means at least 90% first-day fill. Count a term as near full when any session is near full; do not dilute it with another session’s spare seats.
Only fully matched terms with plausible capacity and cells of at least 10 enter seasonal pressure counts. Missing matches, small cells and fill above 125% are unscored. Say how pressure and frequency denominators differ.
State the observation window and source limitations. Historical near-full offerings suggest planning pressure; they do not prove unmet demand or guarantee future schedules or available seats.
Identify the first-day measure as a reconstruction. Banner keeps only the current status date, so late additions later dropped may be counted on day one. Show source-covered non-offerings separately from missing campus terms.
Gen Ed suggestion tables reuse the same guarded first-day history. Show the latest matching-season offering at each course/campus/college/session, ordered by offering frequency then first-day enrollment. Count only source-covered terms in frequency denominators. Course credits/titles come from retained section metadata and do not establish current catalog eligibility.

Implementation boundaries

Scheduling, row assignment, graph metrics and evidence resolution belong in branches. Features assemble display payloads. Modules and browser code render those payloads and handle interaction. They do not infer requirements, schedule courses or count prerequisites independently. Planning itself uses metadata only; optional offering-history enrichment reads section and class-list data through an explicit cone. Individual student rows never enter the browser.

Regression checks must cover the complete 16-credit budget, semester extension, all starting routes, converging chains, concurrent timing, source type/year mismatches, and program-versus-course citations. Inspect the rendered board after layout or color changes.