check-single-ask-parts.yml

Diff-scoped check that warns when a pull request adds or revises an exercise part that asks for more than one thing. The lab’s rule (Ezra, 2026-10-27) is that each exercise part asks for one thing, and a part that asks for several things is split into several parts, with the solution split the same way.

A part is a list item or a paragraph in the body of an exercise div (#exr-), outside any nested .sol or .solution div. An ask is a clause that opens with an imperative verb the exercises use, such as Compute, Find, Show, Compare, Plot or Explain. The check reports a part with two or more asks: two such sentences, or one sentence whose clauses open with such a verb after “, and”, “, then”, “;”, “and then” or “and also”, or after a bare “and” that is followed by such a verb.

The check does not count:

anything inside a code fence, a code span, an HTML comment, display math or inline math;
a part that carries  on its first line or the line before it, or an exercise that carries it on its opening fence or on the line just before the fence.

A part the pull request does not touch is never reported. With no base to diff against, the check skips instead of scanning the whole tree. It is a heuristic, so it warns by default; fail: true makes it block.

Known limits of the heuristic:

a blank line inside a list item splits the item into two parts, as Markdown does for a paragraph;
an ask phrased without one of the listed verbs, such as “Why does …?”, is not counted;
a line that holds only an HTML comment ends a part, as a blank line does;
a display-math block with no blank line around it belongs to the paragraph next to it, as in Markdown, so that paragraph’s asks count together;
the verb list is English only.

Inputs

Input	Default	Meaning
`globs`	`*.qmd`	Git pathspecs of tracked files to check (recursive)
`paths-ignore`	none	Comma- or newline-separated globs to skip
`fail`	`false`	Fail on a finding; `false` warns
`whole-tree`	`false`	Scan every part, to measure a corpus
`python-version`	`3.x`	Python version

Usage

Copy examples/check-single-ask-parts.yml to .github/workflows/check-single-ask-parts.yml.