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The observers_<shortname> template lists people who regularly attend a group’s meetings as observers rather than members. Their names appear in the Observers/Guests section of the GitHub meeting issue and in the Present section of the HackMD minutes document.

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File naming

templates/observers_<shortname>
For example: templates/observers_tsc

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Format

The file is a plain Markdown list. The conventional format includes a GitHub handle, the person’s full name, and the word “observer” to distinguish them from members: 
* @github_handle (Full Name - observer)
* @github_handle (Full Name - observer)
The format is not strictly enforced — the file contents are inserted as-is into the generated documents. You can adapt the format to your group’s conventions.

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Example: TSC observers file

The observers_tsc file for the Node.js TSC is currently empty, meaning the TSC has no standing observers configured. This is a valid state — the observers file is optional. When empty, the $OBSERVERS$ placeholder in the issue and minutes is replaced with an empty string. An example of a populated observers file (from the observers_commcomm template) looks like this: 
* @therebelrobot (Oz Haven - observer)
* @ParidelPooya (Pooya Paridel - observer)
* @rykerrumsey (Ryker Rumsey - observer)
* @baez (Behzad Karim - observer)
* @BinarySo1o (Therese Stirling - observer)
* @amiller-gh (Adam Miller - observer)
* @yosuke-furukawa (Yosuke Furukawa - observer)
* @Maurice-Hayward (Maurice Hayward - observer)
* @mikehostetler (Mike Hostetler - observer)
* @sarahkconway (Sarah Conway - observer)
* @Tiriel (Benjamin Zaslavsky - observer)
* @DiegoZoracKy (Diego ZoracKy - observer)
* @ZibbyKeaton (Zibby Keaton - observer)
* @tobyfarley (Toby Farley - observer)
* @Bamieh (Ahmad Bamieh - observer)
* @pchrysa (Chrysa - observer)
* @foadlab (observer)
* @codeekage (Abraham Agiri - observer)
* @Voskan (Voskan Voskanyan - observer)

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How it maps to the issue and minutes

The contents of the observers file are substituted for $OBSERVERS$ in both meeting_issue.md (under Observers/Guests) and in minutes_base_<shortname> (under Present, immediately after $INVITED$). When the file is empty, $OBSERVERS$ is replaced with an empty string. The parseVariables() function treats a missing or empty value as '', so no placeholder text is left in the output. See Template Variables for the full variable reference.
The observers file must exist in the templates/ directory even if it is empty. The CLI will throw a file-not-found error if the file is missing entirely.

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