Implementation notes — rich per-person bios (2026-07-21)

Founder feedback: "These descriptions are pretty thin still after passing through a deep research." This pass replaces the short tooltip stories on people/*.html with rich, research-woven bios + a sourced "Documented facts" list.

What was built

• people-bios.json (new, ~136KB) — slug → {bio: [paragraphs], facts: [{text, source_label, source_url, confidence}]}. Covers all 90 non-living people; the 3 living-minimal pages (ben-wilson, john-herman-wilson-1956, brenda-gibby-wilson) are deliberately absent, per design. Authored from 2026-07-21-lineage-research-partA/B.md + 2026-07-20-wilson-tree-v0.md + the existing ANC/GROUPS stories.
• build-people.mjs extended:
  • Loads people-bios.json if present (try/catch → graceful fallback to the short story if missing).
  • Bio paragraphs render as .bio > p replacing .story as the page's main text. index.html tooltip stories are untouched (the generator only reads index.html).
  • New factsSection() — "Documented facts" list: fact text + linked source label (unlinked when source_url is null) + small confidence pill (.conftag, solid=Confirmed, dashed=Probable, dotted=Possible — matching the site's existing badge language).
  • sourcesSection() now dedupes against fact source URLs; section retitles to "Further reading" when facts exist; omitted entirely if everything was already cited in facts; the honest no-links fallback line only shows when there are no facts either. The 📷 own-memorial header link still derives from the raw SOURCES map, so dedupe can't break it.
  • CSS additions: .bio, ul.facts, .factsrc, .conftag{,.probable,.possible}.
  • One data fix: SPOUSE_NOTES['william-olney-1756'] updated from "wife not yet identified" to the research finding (Mary Myers 1761–1818, three secondary sources, not drawn on the chart) so the family section doesn't contradict the new bio.

Bio depth decisions

• Rich (2–5 paragraphs, ~45 people): everyone with real research material — Monroe, Eleanor, Danny, Floyd, Bertha, John Martin Gibby (full TVA numbers from the Clay County Progress piece), George W. Gibby (Fontana Dam grave relocation — "the TVA moved this family's dead as well as its living"), both John Herman Wilsons' naming-heirloom halves, Maggie Cook (the "Kansas" mystery), Levi (Leah Johnson childbirth death → migration re-dating), Richard Wilson (brick wall), Peter Mashburn / Narcissa / John M. Hayes (Civil War cluster), the LeQuire chain (France-lore kill via 1832 sworn testimony), Julius/Eva Foster (census-case + contamination traps), the Lambert/Oakford/Sharp/Rogers Manhattan cluster (Rittenhouse frontier, Anita discovery, Boodle Board), the Olney chain (Nantucket puzzle, Burt-Olney canning mismatch, Preserved naming), Thomas Olney + Marie Ashton + Sayles.
• One solid paragraph (~45 people): genuinely thin records (census-only Fosters, register-only Ashen-generation wives, single-memorial in-laws). NOT padded, per spec.
• Confidence discipline held: PROBABLE facts phrased as "the records say / probably / per Find A Grave"; single-contributor-cluster caveats stated in-bio (Kent, Cook, Sharp branches); quarantines preserved — no Roger Williams descent claim (Catharine Sayles's bio explicitly refuses it and cites the 1889 book's exhaustive negative), no "born in France", no royal/Norman Olney descent, Zachary Taylor = lore, Bertha's 1995-vs-1999 death tension left open, Sarah Burt Salisbury's failed r2 verifier disclosed on her page.

Verification (server :8744, Playwright, cache-busted ?v=)

• node build-people.mjs → 93 pages; validation script: 90/90 pages render .bio + Documented facts; 0 dangling internal hrefs across 94 files; no page fell back to the short story.
• Screenshots read (full-page): monroe-wilson, eleanor-lambert-wilson, jacob-sharp, josephine-oakford, thomas-olney — all render rich multi-paragraph bios, facts with linked sources + confidence pills, deduped Further reading, intact special blocks (NYT/USPS/Navy/memoirs) and family sections. Also nancy-willis as the thin-page sample (1 para + 1 fact, sources section correctly omitted after dedupe).
• Console: 0 errors on all localhost:8744 loads (index.html + 6 people pages; the only session-history error was a stale port-8742 favicon 404 from a prior session, not this site).
• Server killed after verification; temp screenshots deleted.

Not done / open

• No deploy (per dispatch). index.html untouched.
• JSON validation is at generator level only (merge script checked bio/facts shape + slug coverage); a schema is overkill for a single-author file.
• If new people are added to ANC/GROUPS later, they'll render with the short story until a people-bios.json entry is written — intentional graceful degradation.