Review an explorer → MDIM mapping (side-by-side HTML)

When an explorer is being retired in favour of one or more MDIMs, map-explorer-to-mdim produces a proposed mapping (one explorer view → one MDIM view per row). This skill turns that proposal into a shareable, self-contained HTML where a human steps through every pair, sees both charts side by side, and clicks Approve / Flag (with notes). Everything is saved automatically in the reviewer's browser, with an optional file auto-save and Import for cross-machine recovery.

The HTML is a single file — no server, no dependencies. Just send the .html to the reviewer.

When to trigger

• After map-explorer-to-mdim has produced ai/<slug>-mdim-mapping/.
• When the user asks for a review/verification UI for an explorer → MDIM migration.
• When the user mentions sharing the proposed redirects with a topic owner or colleague for sign-off before redirects are wired up.

If ai/<slug>-mdim-mapping/mapping_proposal.csv doesn't exist yet, stop and tell the user to run map-explorer-to-mdim first (or do that as a prerequisite). This skill does not produce the mapping itself.

Inputs you'll need

1. The mapping directory — ai/<slug>-mdim-mapping/, the output of map-explorer-to-mdim. Must contain at least mapping_proposal.csv and mapping_rules.py. multidim_<short>_views.csv files are also used by the coverage report.
2. The explorer slug — matches the live URL, e.g. natural-disasters for https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/natural-disasters.
3. The published Grapher slug per MDIM — one per MDIM short name listed in mapping_rules.MDIMS. This is the slug that appears in /grapher/<slug> on the host, not the catalogPath. The skill cannot derive it without DB access, so ask the user (or look it up via multi_dim_data_pages.slug if you have DB access).

If the user hasn't told you the published MDIM slugs and you can't query the DB, stop and ask — they're required to build the right-hand iframe URLs.

Usage

.venv/bin/python .claude/skills/review-explorer-mdim-mapping/scripts/build_review.py \
    --mapping-dir ai/<slug>-mdim-mapping \
    --explorer-slug <slug> \
    --mdim-slug <short_1>=<grapher_slug_1> \
    --mdim-slug <short_2>=<grapher_slug_2> \
    [--host https://ourworldindata.org] \
    [--output ai/<slug>_view_review.html] \
    [--no-coverage]

Concrete example for natural-disasters:

.venv/bin/python .claude/skills/review-explorer-mdim-mapping/scripts/build_review.py \
    --mapping-dir ai/natural-disasters-mdim-mapping \
    --explorer-slug natural-disasters \
    --mdim-slug deaths=natural-disasters-deaths \
    --mdim-slug affected=natural-disasters-people-affected \
    --mdim-slug economic_damages=natural-disasters-economic-damages

The script prints a coverage summary (rows, distinct MDIM targets, many-to-one collapses, unresolved rows, MDIM views never targeted) before writing the HTML. Read it: it's the fastest way to spot a mapping gap the reviewer can't see by eye.

What the reviewer sees

• One pair at a time — old explorer (left) vs proposed MDIM view (right), both rendered in iframes against the configured host.
• Selection chips above each chart (e.g. Disaster Type: Floods · Impact: Deaths · … and type: flood · timespan: annual · …) and the full URL underneath, with "open ↗".
• Approve ✓ / Flag ⚠ / Clear, optional note, prev/next + a jump dropdown, filters (All / To review / Approved / Flagged), live counts.
• Keyboard: ←/→ nav, a approve, f flag, c clear.
• Persistence: every action auto-saves to localStorage (survives refresh & close). Auto-save to file (Chrome/Edge File System Access) mirrors each change to a JSON on disk. Import restores/merges from any exported JSON — the cross-machine recovery path and the way two reviewers merge their decisions.
• Export CSV / JSON at any time for the verified mapping artifact.

Sharing the HTML with the team

The generated file is fully self-contained — you can just send it (Slack DM, email, etc.) and the reviewer opens it locally. For a link the whole team can hit without passing a file around, publish it to vibe.owid.io (OWID's internal site for sharing self-contained webapps).

The OWID vibe-app plugin skill handles the publish (scaffolds the entry in owid/vibe-webapps and ships it to vibe.owid.io). It is not installed by default in this repo — if vibe-app isn't in the user's skills list, tell them to install it once via /plugin in the Claude Code shell (it lives in the OWID Claude plugins marketplace). The typical follow-up after this skill produces ai/<slug>_view_review.html is:

"Publish ai/<slug>_view_review.html to vibe.owid.io as a vibe app."

…which Claude routes to /vibe-app. Don't try to reproduce its behaviour here — keep the two concerns separate (this skill builds the HTML; vibe-app publishes it).

After the reviewer is done

They'll either:

• Send back the auto-saved JSON or an exported one, which contains every row with its status (approved / flagged / blank) and note, plus the explorer/MDIM URLs. Use it to finalize the redirects (rows with status == "approved" are ready to wire up; flagged rows need a second pass with the user).
• Or just signal "looks good" — at which point the verified mapping artifact is the exported JSON / CSV.

Caveats / gotchas

• Reviewer's localStorage is per-browser and per-file path. Refreshes don't lose work, but switching browser or machine does — that's why Auto-save to file / Import exist. If the reviewer shares decisions, ask them to Export JSON and send it.
• Single-choice MDIM dimensions are pruned from URLs (and from the mapping_proposal.csv wide block) — the skill respects that, so you should not manually add e.g. a metric param for an MDIM whose metric has only one active choice.
• Explorer URL params are display names, not slugs (e.g. Disaster Type=Floods, not disaster_type=floods). map-explorer-to-mdim's dimension_1..N columns already hold display values, and EXPLORER_DIMENSIONS names them in order.
• hideControls=true is appended to both URLs to hide each side's own selector chrome (the selection is shown as chips above the chart). Click "open ↗" to see the view with controls.
• The MDIM must be reachable on the configured host. Defaults to production; for a staging branch's MDIMs use --host https://staging-site-<branch> (or have the reviewer edit Settings in the HTML).
• The colleague's CSV is not the same format. If a mapping was hand-made in a custom schema (e.g. multi-block header CSV), it must be converted to mapping_proposal.csv + mapping_rules.py first, or you can write a quick one-off adapter script in ai/ and point this skill at the produced folder.