chore(lexicon): describe every lexicon category

[jirhiker]

What

61 of the 62 seeded lexicon categories carried description = NULL — only data_maturity had one. This writes the missing text, and gets it into databases that are already seeded.

lexicon_category.description has existed since the initial migration, so nothing here needs a schema change. The text was simply never written.

The descriptions

Most categories are self-evident from their name. The ones worth care are those whose term lists overlap, where the vocabulary is easiest to misread. Grounded in the mapping comments on db/data_provenance.py:

• collection_method is the union of the legacy NM_Aquifer LU_AltitudeMethod and LU_CoordinateMethod lookups. elevation_method and coordinate_method are those two lookups on their own.
• origin_type is likewise the union of LU_DataSource and LU_Depth_CompletionSource — both of which also exist as separate categories.
• casing_material vs screen_type: identical term sets, different well component.
• status vs the status_type / status_value pair used by status_history.
• country, county, state have no seeded terms, and say so rather than implying content.

release_status deliberately does not mention embargoed — that term isn't in this branch's lexicon; it arrives with the access-control work and will need a follow-up line then.

All 61 fit the String(255) column. data_maturity was left as-is.

Getting it into existing databases

Two changes, because the JSON alone reaches nothing that's already seeded.

init_lexicon now upserts. It previously inserted only categories that were missing, so a database seeded before the descriptions existed would never receive them. It now uses ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE wrapped in coalesce: a NULL description is filled from the seed, and a description edited through /lexicon is left alone.

A data migration for the populated databases, since neither a fresh seed nor oco initialize-lexicon happens on deploy. It reads the same JSON and touches only NULL descriptions.

It is gated on alembic_revision="66ac1af4ba69" — the initial migration, which created the column. This is deliberate: the runner skips any migration whose revision isn't applied, so pinning to the current head would risk it being silently skipped on an environment whose alembic state lags. The initial revision is applied everywhere.

Testing

• Two tests added to tests/test_data_migrations.py, following the file's existing pattern: a NULL description gets filled while a hand-edited one survives, and re-running is a no-op.
• 41 passed across test_data_migrations, test_data_migrations_cli, test_lexicon, test_migrations, test_cli_commands.
• Full runner path exercised against a live test database, not just run(): the alembic gate passed, descriptions backfilled, a data_migration_history row was written, and a second invocation logged "already applied" and returned False. All 62 categories non-NULL afterward.
• black + flake8 clean.

Applying it

CD deliberately does not run data migrations — it runs alembic upgrade head and only reports pending ones. So after this merges and deploys, apply it through the Data Migrations workflow (workflow_dispatch), per environment:

1. action = status against staging — confirms it is registered and unapplied.
2. action = run with 20260901_0001_backfill_lexicon_category_descriptions.
3. Repeat for production.

Safe to re-run: it only writes rows whose description is still NULL.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[github-actions]

Coverage

✅ 79.39% total — gate is 75%.

Coverage for the Python files changed in this PR

Name	Stmts	Miss	Cover	Missing
core/initializers.py	142	20	86%	67-69, 73-82, 193, 197, 215, 284-297, 301-302
data_migrations/migrations/20260901_0001_backfill_lexicon_category_descriptions.py	20	0	100%
TOTAL	162	20	88%