GSoC 2026 Week 7: Finishing Milestone 1 Integration, Live Demos, and Backup Server Hurdles

This week was busy and exciting. We successfully merged the frontend V2 migration, showcased the workflow live in the PM demo, and started setting up the acceptance tests under the feature flag. With the Milestone 1 evaluation starting on June 29, there was a lot to wrap up.

Goals for this Week

My main goals for this week were:

• Get PR 1.5 (Suggestion Resolver) and the massive PR 1.6 (Frontend V2 Integration) merged.
• Showcase the live V2 translation suggestion lifecycle in the PM demo meeting.
• Address reviewer feedback on the PR 1.9 Beam job.
• Open PR 1.11 to gate acceptance tests under the feature flag.

What I Accomplished

• PR 1.5 and PR 1.6 Merged: Both PRs are successfully merged. PR 1.6 was a major milestone, with over 2,000 lines of changes refactoring frontend services (like ContributionOpportunitiesBackendApiService, TranslateTextBackendApiService, and TranslateTextService) to target our V2 endpoints. PR 1.5 updates the backend handlers to resolve target IDs using the new generic models.
• Milestone 1 PM Demo: On June 20, I showcased the V2 translation suggestion lifecycle live on my local setup in front of the mentors and Org Admin (Hasitha, Chris). During the live run, we noticed a minor bug where the progress bar on the dashboard cards did not update when suggestions were accepted. I fixed this right after the demo by checking for null or undefined explicitly (since 0 was being treated as falsy in the progress check). To show the final working state, I recorded a demo video showing the dashboard progress bar fix and the complete V2 translation player flow, which is linked in my PR comment.
• Beam Job Refactoring (PR 1.9): Based on feedback from the PM demo, I added an override_metadata_feature_flag argument to get_translatable_contents_collection(). This allows the Beam job to bypass the feature flag gate when computing content and translation counts. I also updated the audit job to compare and aggregate total content and translation counts across models to ensure there is no data drift in production.
• Opened PR 1.11 for Acceptance Tests: I gated the Puppeteer E2E tests behind the V2 feature flag by promoting it to the TEST stage. I also updated the test files to use the V2 opportunity structures and adjusted target names to use the new topics/story hierarchy, such as using "Fractions" and "States of Matter" instead of legacy mock topics.
• Completed GFI Requirements: I finished my GSoC Milestone 1 community contribution requirements by writing technical breakdowns for 8 Good First Issues (GFIs) on GitHub.

What I Learned

This week had some valuable lessons on testing and communication.

On the technical side, working on E2E acceptance tests showed me how different browser-driven tests are from unit tests. When running Puppeteer tests in the TEST stage under a feature flag, every setup detail, such as assigning the ReleaseCoordinator role to enable the flag and ensuring the curation data aligns with the V2 structure, needs to be exactly correct.

On the communication side, I got a reminder from my mentor Hasitha about keeping my daily devlogs updated. I had fallen behind on them due to project work. I apologized, realized the gap, and have been posting them daily since then to ensure my progress and blockers are clear to the team.

What I Struggled With

Debugging Puppeteer tests locally can be difficult since they run in headless mode. When the language selector dropdown did not appear in the exploration player during tests, I had to trace the controller logic step by step. I eventually found a database context bug in story_services.py where programmatically created stories were not registering their linked explorations in the ExplorationContextModel.

Additionally, we faced some delays in testing the Beam jobs (PR 1.9 and PR 1.10) on the backup server. Since Hasitha handles the server admin work and deployments, we have been working to resolve GAE environment limitations:

• GAE Size Limits: Deploying to the backup server got blocked because the Release Candidate (RC) build size exceeded the maximum allowed limit in GAE. We are currently waiting for an infrastructure fix to land on develop.
• RC Expiration: The backup server GAE builds expire every 24 hours. If testing gets delayed, Hasitha has to rebuild the RC, which makes the verification cycle slower and delays our merges.
• Codeowner reviews: I am also working to complete the codeowner skill requirement (reviewing 4 PRs). Because there are not many community PRs under my mentor Hasitha’s scope, I have only been able to shadow-review 1 PR so far. I hope to find more review opportunities in Milestone 2.

Next Steps

The immediate goal is to resolve the backup server RC build size issues so we can test and merge PR 1.9 and 1.10, and get PR 1.11 (acceptance tests) approved before the evaluation starts on June 29. After Milestone 1 is merged, we will start Milestone 2, beginning with adding ContentType.METADATA and extracting translatable metadata fields from explorations.

PR Link Reference

For those interested in following the implementation details and review discussions, you can find the PR links below:

• PR 1.5 (Suggestion Resolver): PR #26327 (Merged)
• PR 1.6 (Frontend V2 Integration): PR #26337 (Merged)
• PR 1.9 (Beam Translation Backfill): PR #26187 (Under Review)
• PR 1.10 (Beam Pinning Backfill): PR #26392 (Under Review)
• PR 1.11 (Acceptance Tests): PR #26458 (Under Review)