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Render a Quarto report (Stata engine) to HTML / PDF / DOCX. Performs freshness check on included tables/figures, verifies the Stata Quarto engine, and validates numerical claims before rendering.

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Render a Quarto + Stata Report

Render a .qmd report that uses the Stata Quarto engine (or pure-Markdown Stata code blocks). Pre-flight checks ensure the report is complete, fresh, and honest (no unverified numerical claims).

When to Use

  • After completing an analysis, to assemble the writeup
  • Before sharing with coauthors / advisors
  • Before a paper-submission deadline

Steps

1. Resolve the file

From $ARGUMENTS find the .qmd. If just a basename, search reports/. If empty, list reports/*.qmd and ask.

2. Pre-flight checks

a) Quarto + Stata engine available:

quarto check

Confirm "Stata: OK" (or equivalent). If missing, emit a clear setup instruction:

"Quarto's Stata engine is not installed. Install with: pip install nbstata (or pip install pystata), then re-run."

Do NOT attempt to render without the engine — it will fail confusingly.

b) No inline analysis — grep the .qmd for analysis commands inside Stata code chunks:

grep -n -E "regress|reghdfe|ivreg|areg|xtreg|csdid" reports/<file>.qmd

If found inside {stata} chunks → flag and refuse to render. Analysis lives in dofiles/, not in reports.

c) Freshness check for every included artifact (per single-source-of-truth):

  • For each output/tables/X or output/figures/X referenced in the .qmd
  • Find the producing do-file (grep for the path in dofiles/)
  • If do-file mtime > artifact mtime → STALE → re-run via /run-stata BEFORE rendering

d) Citation completeness:

  • Extract every @key from the .qmd
  • Confirm each appears in references.bib

e) Numerical-claim validation:

  • Identify text claims with numbers (regex on the Markdown narrative outside code chunks)
  • Delegate each to the log-validator agent against the relevant logs/*.log
  • If any claim is UNVERIFIED → refuse to render until either the do-file re-runs or the claim is removed

3. Render

quarto render reports/<file>.qmd

By default, produces HTML in docs/ (or report-local _files/). For PDF or DOCX, the .qmd needs the format block to declare them.

4. Post-render verification

  • Confirm output exists and is non-empty
  • Open the rendered HTML and confirm figures and tables display (read the rendered file's image references)
  • No "Could not render" placeholders

5. Report to user

  • Path of rendered output
  • Freshness verdict
  • Numerical-claim verdict (N verified, 0 unverified)
  • Citation completeness (N keys, 0 missing)
  • Next step (commit / share / revise)

Examples

  • /render-report reports/analysis_report.qmd → Full pre-flight + render.

  • /render-report analysis_report → resolves to reports/analysis_report.qmd.

Troubleshooting

  • "No engine for stata" — install nbstata or pystata; see Quarto Stata engine docs.
  • Render hangs — typically the Stata engine launching a long computation. Reports should NOT do analysis; refactor into dofiles/.
  • Broken figure path — the .qmd references output/figures/X.pdf but the file doesn't exist. Re-run the producing do-file.
  • Bibliography file not found — the _quarto.yml should point to bibliography: ../references.bib (relative from reports/).

Notes

  • Reports are output, not source. They should NOT contain analysis logic. If a result is ad-hoc, put it in a do-file first, then include from there.
  • Numerical-claim validation is a HARD GATE. If a claim cannot be verified, the report does not render. This is per log-verification-protocol.
  • Output goes to docs/ for GitHub Pages compatibility (set in _quarto.yml).