An AI-curated, git-backed API of computational-biology conferences and their deadlines.
Most conference-deadline sites are a static countdown page over a YAML file with no API, and they go stale when the community stops contributing. This one is different in two ways: it exposes a real query API (so humans and AI agents can pull current data), and the dataset is kept fresh by a weekly AI-curation task on top of community PRs.
Scope: computational biology / bioinformatics / genomics conferences with deadlines.
The dataset is a single file — data/conferences.json — shaped { "conferences": [ ... ] }. It is bundled into a Cloudflare Worker at deploy time and served from memory at the edge. There is no database: reads come from the file, corrections are GitHub PRs.
Each record: name, year, optional full_name, location, start_date, end_date, link, deadlines: [{name, date}], note. The API derives a stable series slug and instance id (slug-year). See schema.json.
Base URL: https://conferences.databio.org
| Endpoint | What |
|---|---|
GET /conferences |
list instances — filters year, from, to, location, q, upcoming |
GET /deadlines |
flat, date-sorted deadline feed — filters from, to, days, kind |
GET /{slug} |
a conference series (all tracked years), e.g. /ismb |
GET /{slug}/{year} |
one instance, e.g. /recomb/2027 |
GET /{slug}/{year}/deadlines · /calendar.ics |
that instance's deadlines / calendar |
GET /calendar.ics |
subscribable iCal of upcoming deadlines (accepts the same filters) |
GET /conferences.json · /conferences.csv |
bulk export |
GET /openapi.json · /schema.json · /llms.txt |
machine/AI descriptors |
GET /stats |
counts, coverage, last-updated |
POST /suggest |
{name, year, ...} → a prefilled GitHub issue link |
npm install
npm run test # unit tests (vitest)
npm run typecheck # tsc --noEmit
npm run validate # lint data/conferences.json
npm run dev # wrangler dev (local)The recurring conference-research procedure lives in
automation/update-conferences.md. It
researches the current and next calendar year from official conference sources,
updates only verified fields in data/conferences.json, and leaves uncertain
information untouched.
A ChatGPT Scheduled Task performs the normal weekly refresh using the connected
GitHub repository. AGENTS.md contains the ChatGPT-specific GitHub/PR behavior.
The Claude Code workflow at
.github/workflows/scheduled-conference-update.yml is a manual
workflow_dispatch fallback; its skill file is only a thin wrapper around the
same canonical instructions.
Both paths use conference-update as a durable staging branch. If that remote
branch already exists, the agent starts from it and treats its
data/conferences.json as current state, preserving pending unmerged changes.
If an open PR already uses that branch, new verified changes are added to the
same PR. If the branch exists without an open PR, the agent continues from it
and opens a review PR when the branch contains pending data changes. Only when
conference-update does not exist does a run start from current main.
Pull-request CI verifies that data/conferences.json is already in canonical
normalized form, validates the data, typechecks the project, and runs the test
suite before changes are merged.
Add or fix a conference by editing data/conferences.json and opening a PR — see CONTRIBUTING.md. CI validates the file on every PR.
Code: MIT (LICENSE). Data: CC-BY 4.0 (LICENSE-data).