I18N Sync

i18n sync

Closes the translation gap between en-US (canonical) and the 20 other locales under src/locales/. The skill is plumbing, not a translation engine — it adds the missing keys with empty values so the JSON shape matches en-US and translators can fill them in later. Runtime behavior is unchanged: empty values fall back to the en-US default at render time.

Hard constraints

These constraints are absolute and override any other instructions:

1. en-US is the canonical source. Other locales must contain the same key set; values may be empty strings (intentional fallback) or filled with real translations. Never modify en-US.
2. Only edit src/locales/*/grafana-pathfinder-app.json. Never touch source code.
3. Preserve existing translations exactly. Do not retranslate, "improve", or normalize values — translators own them.
4. Match the i18next-parser config (src/locales/i18next-parser.config.js):
   • Keys sorted alphabetically within each nested object
   • No createOldCatalogs artifacts
   • failOnWarnings: true — extraction must remain clean after edits
5. Never fabricate values. Missing keys get empty strings (""), not English text, not placeholder text, not auto-translated content.
6. Run npm run prettier after edits. Run npm run i18n-extract to confirm extraction still passes.

Workflow

Phase 0 — Setup

1. Read src/locales/i18next-parser.config.js and capture the locales array. Treat the parser config as the source of truth for which languages are supported. At time of writing this includes en-US, de-DE, es-ES, fr-FR, it-IT, hu-HU, id-ID, ja-JP, ko-KR, nl-NL, pl-PL, pt-PT, pt-BR, ru-RU, sv-SE, tr-TR, zh-CN, zh-TW, zh-Hans, zh-Hant, cs-CZ — but read the file, do not hardcode.

2. Read src/locales/en-US/grafana-pathfinder-app.json as the canonical key tree.

3. Confirm working tree is clean for src/locales/. If not, abort (translators may have in-progress work).

Phase 1 — Audit each non-English locale

For each locale in the parser config (excluding en-US):

1. Read src/locales/<locale>/grafana-pathfinder-app.json. If the file does not exist, treat as "all keys missing" (and create the file in Phase 2).

2. Recursively walk the en-US key tree. For each leaf key in en-US:

   • Present + non-empty in locale → filled
   • Present + empty string in locale → empty stub (intentional, fine)
   • Absent from locale → missing (will be stubbed in Phase 2)

3. Walk the locale's tree. For each leaf key:

   • Absent from en-US → stale (flag for human review; never auto-delete)

4. Record counts per locale:

   { filled, empty_existing, missing, stale, total_canonical }
   

Phase 2 — Stub missing keys

For each locale with missing > 0:

1. Read the current file (or start with an empty object if absent).

2. For each missing key path (e.g., contextPanel.userProfileBar.nameCardRole):

   • Navigate to the parent object, creating intermediate objects as needed.
   • Add the key with value "" (empty string).

3. Sort all keys alphabetically within each nested object. This matches i18next-parser's output. Do not change the structure beyond inserting the new keys and sorting.

4. Preserve existing values byte-for-byte (apart from the alphabetical reordering, which is non-destructive).

5. Write the file back.

Phase 3 — Stale-key handling

Stale keys (in locale but not in en-US) are not auto-deleted. They may be:

• Genuinely stale (translation for a feature that was removed) → human should delete
• Pending an upstream merge that adds the key back → human should keep

Flag stale keys in the gap report (Phase 5). Do not modify the file.

Phase 4 — Validate

After all locale edits:

1. Prettier:

   npm run prettier
   

   Confirm only src/locales/*/grafana-pathfinder-app.json files were touched:

   git diff --name-only
   

   If anything else changed, abort and revert.

2. i18n-extract:

   npm run i18n-extract
   

   The parser config has failOnWarnings: true. If the run fails, surface the warning and abort.

3. JSON sanity:

   for f in src/locales/*/grafana-pathfinder-app.json; do
     jq empty "$f" || echo "BROKEN: $f"
   done
   

   Each file must parse. If any fail, abort.

Phase 5 — Report

Emit a gap report and commit:

## i18n gap report — <date>

Canonical (en-US): N keys

| Locale | Filled | Empty stubs | Missing → stubbed | Stale (flagged) |
| ------ | ------ | ----------- | ----------------- | --------------- |
| de-DE  | 86     | 0           | 5                 | 0               |
| fr-FR  | 91     | 0           | 0                 | 0               |
| ...    |        |             |                   |                 |

### Newly stubbed keys per locale

- de-DE:
  - contextPanel.userProfileBar.nameCardRole
  - contextPanel.userProfileBar.notificationToastPrompt
  - ...

### Stale keys (review for removal)

- it-IT:
  - oldFeature.deprecatedButton
- ...

### Locales unchanged

- fr-FR, es-ES, pt-PT, pt-BR, ja-JP (no missing keys)

Then commit:

git add src/locales/*/grafana-pathfinder-app.json
git commit -m "chore(i18n): stub missing keys across locales"

Do not push. The user reviews and pushes.

Reuses

• src/locales/i18next-parser.config.js — canonical locale list + extraction config.
• npm run i18n-extract — validates the result.
• npm run prettier — formatting.

Integration

• Standalone: maintainer runs /i18n-sync periodically (e.g., after a release that added new English strings).
• From /release-prep (optional): can be invoked as a pre-release step to ensure non-English locales aren't shipping with new keys silently fall-back-only.
• CI augmentation: a future CI gate could check that every locale has the same key set as en-US. This skill produces the artifact that would satisfy that gate.

When to exit cleanly without making changes

• All locales already have the en-US key set in full and no stale keys exist — exit with "All 21 locales in sync with en-US. Nothing to do."
• src/locales/en-US/grafana-pathfinder-app.json does not exist — exit with an error; canonical source missing.
• The parser config file is missing — exit with an error.

Context window management

• Phase 0: read 2 small files (parser config, en-US JSON).
• Phase 1: read each locale file (~50-200 lines each, 20 locales) — bounded to ~4-5k tokens total.
• Phase 2: in-memory edits.
• Phase 3: in-memory flag.
• Phase 4: stream prettier + extract output.
• Phase 5: render report + commit.

Total context per run: well under 20k tokens.

Expected invocation patterns

• Post-feature: after a feature lands that added new t('...', 'default') calls and i18n-extract populated en-US, run /i18n-sync to propagate the keys (as empty stubs) into the other locales.
• Pre-release: maintainer runs /i18n-sync as part of release prep to ensure the shipping snapshot is in sync.
• Translator handoff: maintainer runs /i18n-sync before sending the translation files to translators so they have the canonical key set.

What this skill does NOT do

• Translate English text into other languages (use a translation service, not this skill).
• Delete stale keys (humans review and remove).
• Modify en-US/grafana-pathfinder-app.json (canonical source — only changes via npm run i18n-extract).
• Change i18next-parser.config.js (config is owned elsewhere).
• Validate translations for accuracy (out of scope).

Behavior of empty stub values at runtime

The repo uses @grafana/i18n which is built on i18next. When a key is requested via:

t('contextPanel.start', 'Start');

and the active locale has contextPanel.start: "", i18next falls through to either the next fallback locale or — if no fallback resolves — the second argument to t() (the en-US default). The empty-string sentinel is intentional and matches the runtime expectation. No user sees "" — they see the en-US default if their translation is missing.

This is why the skill stubs with "" rather than copying the English text: copying English would prevent the fallback from finding the up-to-date default if the English source ever changed (e.g., a typo fix). Empty stubs keep the locale's intent ("not yet translated") explicit.

Worked example

Initial state (de-DE missing 3 keys present in en-US):

// src/locales/de-DE/grafana-pathfinder-app.json
{
  "contextPanel": {
    "categoryDocsPage": "Docs-Seite",
    "categoryLearningJourney": "Lernpfad"
  }
}

// src/locales/en-US/grafana-pathfinder-app.json (canonical)
{
  "contextPanel": {
    "categoryDocsPage": "Docs page",
    "categoryInteractiveGuide": "Interactive guide",
    "categoryLearningJourney": "Learning path",
    "resume": "Resume",
    "start": "Start"
  }
}

After /i18n-sync:

// src/locales/de-DE/grafana-pathfinder-app.json
{
  "contextPanel": {
    "categoryDocsPage": "Docs-Seite",
    "categoryInteractiveGuide": "",
    "categoryLearningJourney": "Lernpfad",
    "resume": "",
    "start": ""
  }
}

Report:

## i18n gap report — 2026-05-11

Canonical (en-US): 5 keys

| Locale | Filled | Empty stubs | Missing → stubbed | Stale |
| ------ | ------ | ----------- | ----------------- | ----- |
| de-DE  | 2      | 0           | 3                 | 0     |

### Newly stubbed keys per locale

- de-DE:
  - contextPanel.categoryInteractiveGuide
  - contextPanel.resume
  - contextPanel.start

Committed: chore(i18n): stub missing keys across locales