February Community Conversation

This meeting was held on Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 11:30am ET. Monthly community meetings are convened over Zoom to discuss topics of interest. Usually there are no planned agendas and community members bring ideas and questions to share.

Quick recap

The ColdFront Community Conversation focused on updates from the NSF I-Corps program, where Dori reported she had completed 50 out of 100 planned interviews about ColdFront usage and resource management. The team received positive feedback on documentation, with suggestions to create segmented guides for deployment and development, as well as specific documentation for signals and container deployments. Dahye shared her implementation of a school approval relationship system at NYU ColdFront, which Sajid confirmed was working in production with 20 schools and 5 separate approvers. The team discussed various approaches to handling departmental and organizational hierarchies in ColdFront, with John describing their implementation of a four-level hierarchy system that allows multiple department associations per project. Jacob announced the successful launch of ColdFront at the University of British Columbia, and expressed interest in presenting their plugins, including the "Bomb Cyclone" plugin, at a future meeting.

Next steps

• Dori: Start a documentation working group to improve ColdFront documentation, including creating segmented deployment and development guides, an implementation guide for signals, and documentation for container deployments (especially Kubernetes).
• Jay: Send Dahye the meeting invite and Slack link for the core architecture working group meetings.
• Jacob: Schedule a future meeting to present on the University of British Columbia's ColdFront implementation and plugins (coordinate with Dori).
• Dori: Provide an overall update to the community on what was learned from the I-Corps training after it is completed.
• Core Architecture Working Group: Review Tufts' work on separating customizations and consider it as a model for making it easier to stay up-to-date on the core branch while allowing customizations.
• Core Architecture Working Group: Start recording and publishing summaries of their meetings for broader availability.
• Dori (and team): Submit a proposal for a Birds of a Feather session for PERC (by late April or May deadline).

Summary

NSF I-Corps Feedback Update

Dori provided an update on the NSF I-Corps program, which aims to gather feedback on ColdFront's future and explore governance and sustainability options. They have conducted 50 interviews and are seeking 50 more, particularly from non-users and national labs. Feedback has been positive, with most finding the documentation adequate but suggesting improvements such as separate guides for deployment and development, and more specific information on signals. Dori mentioned starting a documentation working group and considering making ColdFront more opinionated to enhance adoption.

Architecture and Governance Updates

The core architecture working group discussed ongoing pull requests and plans to start a new branch for larger changes, including reviewing Tufts' work on customization separation. Dori mentioned a draft of governance principles would be ready in the next month or two, and updates were shared on a proposed PERC tutorial and Birds of a Feather session. Dahye presented NYU ColdFront's customization, introducing a school approval relationship feature.

ColdFront Organizational Relationships Update

The team discussed implementing a new functionality in ColdFront to handle different types of organizational relationships, with Dahye sharing her implementation of separate approvers for schools. Andrew encouraged Dahye to attend the core working group meetings on Thursdays to discuss the next version of ColdFront, which will aim to be more flexible for various organizational structures. Sajid mentioned that Dahye's implementation is currently working in production with 20 schools, including 5 that have separate approvers for allocation requests. The team also discussed NYU's allocation process, which includes both generic and high-priority access options for schools, with approvers receiving email notifications of allocation requests.

Department Selection in Project Systems

John explained how their system allows users to select their department when creating projects, implementing a four-level hierarchy that includes academic organizations and groups. He described the challenges of tracking interdisciplinary projects and the limitations of relying on LDAP data, noting that user input is necessary for accurate departmental associations. John also mentioned that they allow users to select multiple fields of science and explained their non-standard approach to mapping PI accounts in Slurm and Luster for compute and storage allocations, respectively.

ColdFront Implementation and Plugin Updates

The group discussed the implementation of ColdFront, which Jacob's team at the University of British Columbia had recently launched successfully. They agreed to schedule a future meeting where Jacob would present more details about their plugins, including "Bombs Cyclone," with Dori confirming they would accommodate the West Coast timing. The conversation ended early with a note that after I-Corps training, they would provide an overall community update on their learnings.