$export returns 303 for the result, and who writes the queries once the FHIR data arrives — Jan 20, 2026
Export realigned around 303
A finished job returns a 303 and the client follows the redirect to collect the result. The point is separation: status polling and result fetching stop sharing a response, so their status codes can't clash and each can grow its own headers.
The deliberate decision was not to imitate bulk export — SQL on FHIR returns Parameters rather than a JSON manifest, so pretending to be bulk export buys nothing, and unlike bulk export there's no legacy to carry.
Bulk export itself may move to the same pattern eventually.
Spec-driven workflow for agent coding in the repo
Before making a change you write a change-request folder describing what you're doing and why, and that reasoning becomes part of the history rather than evaporating.
Paired with a skill that pulls the relevant Zulip threads and past meeting transcripts into the design document.
As someone put it: maybe waterfall isn't so bad when agents do it, because it's fast enough that it doesn't feel like waterfall.
The query page — Library from a magic comment
Being refactored to document a convention for generating a Library resource from a plain SQL file via a magic comment, so that anyone building tooling follows the same shape. Table aliases and parameters go in alongside it.
Framed as an optional section rather than a requirement.
Prod the implementers directly
The Zulip thread on empty collections has one response so far. The suggestion: prod the implementers whose engine currently returns a string — since they're the ones the answer costs something.
US federal rural health transformation programme
Raised a question the group kept circling: the money funds value-based care, value-based care needs analytics to identify trends and at-risk patients — but who actually writes the queries and views?
The infrastructure side is what this group builds; the clinical content is somebody else's job and nobody has volunteered.
One idea floated: partnering with a standards body that authors the ViewDefinitions and queries, with any conforming engine free to run them.
The blunter observation: FHIR analytics has made almost no inroads into value-based care so far — which is awkward, because you can't run a value-based programme if you can't measure what happened.