🌱 Sustainability: what keeps these pages running

TL;DR: PIR®'s GitHub pages cost nothing to host. What keeps them alive is a short list of things that quietly expire or drift: the publishing tokens, the scheduled jobs, a shared kit, one generator for the desk portals, and cached link previews. Each is written down here, so none of it depends on anyone's memory.

This covers PIR’s hub on GitHub, this AstroLog and the helpdesk portals together. It’s also this repository’s SUSTAINABILITY.md, and the hub keeps a shorter copy for its own repository. A.L.E.X., PIR’s Discord helper, has its own page about what it takes to run it: A.L.E.X.’s sustainability.

🧩 The pieces

Repository	What it is	How it goes live
`psychedelicsinrecovery.github.io` (public)	The hub: `/`, `/donate/`, `/map/`, the 404, and the arrival kit every page loads	GitHub Pages, straight from `main`
`changelog-astro` (private)	The source of this AstroLog: entries, write-ups, the Astro site	A workflow builds it and publishes only the finished pages
`changelog-astro-public` (public)	The built AstroLog you’re reading	GitHub Pages, from what the workflow pushes
`alex-desk` (private)	A.L.E.X. itself, and `site/build.py`, which builds A.L.E.X.’s pages and writes the four desk portals	A workflow builds `site/dist` and publishes it to `alex-desk-public`, which also serves the shared design system (`alex.css`, `alex.js`)
`litcom-desk`, `techcom-desk`, `github-desk`, `pr-desk` (private)	Each committee’s helpdesk: tickets stay private; only `portal/` is public	A workflow copies `portal/` (plus the license, roadmap and sustainability files) to `<desk>-public`
`catalyst-desk` (private)	The C.A.T.A.L.Y.S.T. chalkboard	A workflow copies `site/` to `catalyst-desk-public`

🛠️ What can quietly stop, and what to do

🔑 The publishing tokens (`PUBLIC_REPO_TOKEN`)

Each private repository above keeps a classic personal access token as the secret PUBLIC_REPO_TOKEN, and uses it to push into its public twin. When it expires, that site stops updating with no sign on the site itself; the desks’ workflows skip quietly with a notice. What to do: renew before the expiry date (scopes repo + workflow), update the secret in every repository that uses it, and run each workflow once by hand.

🔒 The ledger’s private lane (`LEDGER_TOKEN`, optional)

The ledger shows PIR’s private work masked. The build reads the opted-in private repositories with a LEDGER_TOKEN secret when there is one (read-only “Contents” on those repositories), else PUBLIC_REPO_TOKEN; any it can’t read are carried, masked, from the committed snapshot. What to do: add a fine-grained LEDGER_TOKEN to keep those rows live; refresh the snapshot with LEDGER_TOKEN=$(gh auth token) npm run ledger:snapshot in astro/.

🗓️ The daily ledger rebuild

The publish workflow also runs every morning (cron: "23 10 * * *", UTC), so the ledger is never more than a day behind, and checks that no private subject leaks into the build. What to do: if the ledger’s newest day looks old, read the workflow’s run history.

🪞 The hourly README mirror

The hub’s README.md copies the organization profile (psychedelicsinrecovery/.github) every hour. GitHub switches off scheduled workflows in a public repository after 60 days without activity. What to do: edit the profile, never the copy; re-enable the workflow if it stops.

🧰 The arrival kit is shared, and vendored

arrival.js + arrival.css on the hub are copies of drasticstatic/my-template → changelog-template/arrival/; org.js + org.css are PIR’s own. The AstroLog and every desk portal load them from the hub by full URL. What to do: upgrade by copying the two kit files unchanged; push the hub before the AstroLog, and the AstroLog before rebuilding the desks.

🎨 Three stylesheets, one header

alex.css (the design system, from alex-desk-public) and this site’s astrolog.css were written before the kit’s navbar. The hub’s arrival/org.css keeps their old .top nav a rules and alex.css’s bare section padding out of the kit’s navbar, footer, windows and map. What to do: if a header or footer looks off after a design-system change, check the “PIR’s header” block in org.css first.

🏭 The desk portals are generated

The LitCom, TechCom, GitHub and PR portals (<desk>/portal/index.html, README.md, 404.html) are written by alex-desk/site/build.py --desks .., the same code that builds A.L.E.X.’s pages. Each desk’s share image (portal/social-card.jpg) is the card this AstroLog builds at /og/page/<desk>.jpg (words in astro/src/og/pages.ts), copied in. What to do: change a desk’s page in build.py, run python3 site/build.py --desks .. from alex-desk, and commit each desk’s portal/ in its own repository. Hand edits to a desk’s portal/index.html are overwritten.

🖼️ Cached link previews

Discord, WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram and LinkedIn keep their own copy of a link’s preview for days or weeks. No card carries a count, so none goes stale on its own. What to do: after a card changes, refresh the important links; psychedelicsinrecovery/.github → SOCIAL-PREVIEWS.md lists every page with a tailored card and how to refresh each app (Telegram: send the link to @WebpageBot).

👛 Wallet giving, later

The crypto slot on /donate/ is empty on purpose. What to do: when the wallet module (Reown AppKit, Web3Auth for email sign-in) is switched on, add https://psychedelicsinrecovery.github.io to both domain allowlists, with a real client ID. Never put a wallet address in org.js.

🔗 Links that leave GitHub

The nav, the contact and community windows and the map point at psychedelicsinrecovery.org (its contact form, 7th Tradition and WhatsApp pages), the service site’s contact form, CONTACTS.md and the Discord invite. What to do: if one of those addresses changes, update the hub’s arrival/org.js (one place) and this AstroLog’s astro/src/data/map.ts.

📦 Dependencies

Astro, Satori and sharp are pinned in astro/package-lock.json. What to do: upgrade on purpose, build locally, and check a few share cards before pushing.

🙋 Who looks after it

Christopher W, with Alfred (Claude Code). Questions or corrections: open a /techcom ticket in PIR’s Discord. Last reviewed 2026-10-13.