The Round Robin — Claude Context

Project Overview

Bracketology tool suite for NCAA tournament. Static Jekyll site hosted on GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions. Live at theroundrobin.studio.

Key Tools

• The Nest: Bracketology Studio (/bracket/) — React app, build with npm run build
• Accuracy Calculator (Paymon) (/paymon/) — Vanilla JS, edit paymon/index.html directly
• Predictions (/predictions/) — Static Jekyll page showing Grant’s 2026 final bracket

Build System

npm run build          # builds both bracket apps
npm run build:bracket  # bracket/src/app.jsx → bracket/app.js
npm run build:view     # bracket/view/src/app.jsx → bracket/view/app.js

Source files: bracket/src/app.jsx, bracket/view/src/app.jsx Never edit bracket/app.js or bracket/view/app.js directly — they are generated by esbuild.

Deploy

Push to main → GitHub Actions builds and deploys automatically.

Tournament Format: 76 Teams (effective 2027)

The tournament expanded from 68 to 76 teams starting with the 2027 Men’s/Women’s tournaments.

New bracket structure:

• Opening Round: 12 games (24 teams, 12 winners advance)
• First Round: 64 teams (unchanged)
• 8 No. 16 seeds (all in Opening Round, 4 games)
• 6 No. 15 seeds (4 in Opening Round, 2 direct)
• New at-large teams slot at seeds 11–13

SEED_CAPS in bracket/src/app.jsx and bracket/view/src/app.jsx:

//                     s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 s6 s7 s8 s9 s10 s11 s12 s13 s14 s15 s16
const SEED_CAPS     = [ 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4,  4,  6,  6,  6,  6,  6,  8];

Reference: 68-Team Selection Procedures (OUTDATED)

The official NCAA Men’s selection and seeding procedures for the 68-team format (last used 2026): https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2026-05-07/how-field-76-di-mens-teams-picked-march-madness-each-season

⚠️ This document describes 68-team procedures. It is outdated as of the 2027 tournament. Use for historical context on bracketing principles (conference separation, geography, pod assignments) only.

Data

• teams.json — scraped nightly from Warren Nolan via scrape_nitty_gritty.py
• my-bracket.json — Grant’s bracket for shared read-only view

Paymon Scoring System

• 6 pts: exact seed
• 4 pts: within ±1 seed
• 3 pts: correct team, wrong seed (>1 off)
• Max score (76-team era): 76 × 6 = 456
• Max score (68-team era, pre-2027): 68 × 6 = 408 — not directly comparable