A slug is the URL-friendly identifier for projects, collections, and papers.

Prerequisites

• A Whitepapper account

Normalization

Slug normalization rules:

1. Convert to lowercase
2. Replace spaces with -
3. Replace non [a-z0-9-] characters with -
4. Collapse repeated -
5. Trim leading/trailing -

Uniqueness scope

Entity	Unique within
Project slug	Owner account
Collection slug	Parent project
Paper slug	Owner account

Availability check endpoints

GET /projects/slug/available?slug=<slug>&projectId=<optional>
GET /collections/slug/available?slug=<slug>&projectId=<projectId>&collectionId=<optional>
GET /papers/slug/available?slug=<slug>&paperId=<optional>

Collision behavior

Operation	Behavior
Project create	Auto-adjusts to a unique slug
Collection create	Auto-adjusts to a unique slug
Project update with duplicate slug	Fails with conflict
Collection update with duplicate slug	Fails with conflict
Paper create with duplicate explicit slug	Fails with conflict

Auto-adjusted slugs use a short random suffix, not a simple increment.

Reserved path behavior

• Username routes have reserved values (for example: api, dashboard, docs, sitemaps).
• Project and paper reserved slug lists are currently empty in code, but this can be expanded later.
• Empty or invalid normalized slugs are always unavailable.