diff --git a/ingest/config/defaults.yaml b/ingest/config/defaults.yaml
index 41c3432..10ada38 100644
--- a/ingest/config/defaults.yaml
+++ b/ingest/config/defaults.yaml
@@ -1,7 +1,15 @@
+# This configuration file should contain all required configuration parameters
+# for the ingest workflow to run to completion.
+#
+# Define optional config parameters with their default values here so that users
+# do not have to dig through the workflows to figure out the default values
+
 # Sources of sequences to include in the ingest run
 sources: ['genbank']
-# Pathogen NCBI Taxonomy ID
-ncbi_taxon_id: '64320'
+
+# Required to fetch from NCBI Datasets
+ncbi_taxon_id: "64320"
+
 # The list of NCBI Datasets fields to include from NCBI Datasets output
 # These need to be the mneumonics of the NCBI Datasets fields, see docs for full list of fields
 # https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/docs/v2/reference-docs/command-line/dataformat/tsv/dataformat_tsv_virus-genome/#fields
@@ -24,13 +32,18 @@ ncbi_datasets_fields:
   - submitter-affiliation
   - submitter-country
 
-# Params for the curate rule
+# Config parameters related to the curate pipeline
 curate:
-  # NCBI fields to rename to Nextstrain field names.
-  # List of field names to change where the key is the original field name and
-  # the value is the new field name
-  # This is the first step in the pipeline, so any references to field names
-  # in the configs below should use the new field names
+  # URL pointed to public generalized geolocation rules
+  # For the Nextstrain team, this is currently
+  # 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nextstrain/ncov-ingest/master/source-data/gisaid_geoLocationRules.tsv'
+  geolocation_rules_url: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nextstrain/ncov-ingest/master/source-data/gisaid_geoLocationRules.tsv'
+  # The path to the local geolocation rules within the pathogen repo
+  # The path should be relative to the ingest directory.
+  local_geolocation_rules: 'config/geolocation-rules.tsv'
+  # List of field names to change where the key is the original field name and the value is the new field name
+  # The original field names should match the ncbi_datasets_fields provided above.
+  # This is the first step in the pipeline, so any references to field names in the configs below should use the new field names
   field_map:
     accession: genbank_accession
     accession-rev: genbank_accession_rev
@@ -46,47 +59,40 @@ curate:
     submitter-names: authors
     submitter-affiliations: institution
   # Standardized strain name regex
-  # Currently accepts any characters because we do not have a clear standard for strain names
+  # Currently accepts any characters because we do not have a clear standard for strain names across pathogens
   strain_regex: '^.+$'
-  # Back up strain name field if 'strain' doesn't match regex above
+  # Back up strain name field to use if 'strain' doesn't match regex above
   strain_backup_fields: ['genbank_accession']
-  # List of date fields to standardize
+  # List of date fields to standardize to ISO format YYYY-MM-DD
   date_fields: ['date', 'release_date', 'update_date']
-  # Expected date formats present in date fields
+  # List of expected date formats that are present in the date fields provided above
   # These date formats should use directives expected by datetime
   # See https://docs.python.org/3.9/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-format-codes
   expected_date_formats: ['%Y', '%Y-%m', '%Y-%m-%d', '%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ']
-  # Titlecase rules
   titlecase:
-    # Abbreviations not cast to titlecase, keeps uppercase
+    # List of string fields to titlecase
+    fields: ['region', 'country', 'division', 'location']
+    # List of abbreviations not cast to titlecase, keeps uppercase
     abbreviations: ['USA']
     # Articles that should not be cast to titlecase
     articles: [
       'and', 'd', 'de', 'del', 'des', 'di', 'do', 'en', 'l', 'la', 'las', 'le',
       'los', 'nad', 'of', 'op', 'sur', 'the', 'y'
     ]
-    # List of string fields to titlecase
-    fields: ['region', 'country', 'division', 'location']
-  # Authors field name
+  # Metadata field that contains the list of authors associated with the sequence
   authors_field: 'authors'
-  # Authors default value if authors value is empty
+  # Default value to use if the authors field is empty
   authors_default_value: '?'
-  # Field name for the generated abbreviated authors
-  abbr_authors_field: 'abbr_authors'
-  # General geolocation rules to apply to geolocation fields
-  geolocation_rules_url: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nextstrain/ncov-ingest/master/source-data/gisaid_geoLocationRules.tsv'
-  # Local geolocation rules that are only applicable to zika data
-  # Local rules can overwrite the general geolocation rules provided above
-  local_geolocation_rules: 'config/geolocation-rules.tsv'
-  # User annotations file
-  annotations: 'config/annotations.tsv'
-  # ID field used to merge annotations
+  # Path to the manual annotations file
+  # The path should be relative to the ingest directory
+  annotations: "config/annotations.tsv"
+  # The ID field in the metadata to use to merge the manual annotations
   annotations_id: 'genbank_accession'
-  # Field to use as the sequence ID in the FASTA file
-  id_field: 'genbank_accession'
-  # Field to use as the sequence in the FASTA file
-  sequence_field: 'sequence'
-  # Final output columns for the metadata TSV
+  # The ID field in the metadata to use as the sequence id in the output FASTA file
+  output_id_field: 'genbank_accession'
+  # The field in the NDJSON record that contains the actual genomic sequence
+  output_sequence_field: 'sequence'
+  # The list of metadata columns to keep in the final output of the curation pipeline.
   metadata_columns: [
     'genbank_accession',
     'genbank_accession_rev',
@@ -104,4 +110,3 @@ curate:
     'authors',
     'institution',
   ]
-
diff --git a/ingest/rules/curate.smk b/ingest/rules/curate.smk
index dee2813..f278fec 100644
--- a/ingest/rules/curate.smk
+++ b/ingest/rules/curate.smk
@@ -64,11 +64,10 @@ rule curate:
         titlecase_fields=config["curate"]["titlecase"]["fields"],
         authors_field=config["curate"]["authors_field"],
         authors_default_value=config["curate"]["authors_default_value"],
-        abbr_authors_field=config["curate"]["abbr_authors_field"],
         annotations_id=config["curate"]["annotations_id"],
         metadata_columns=config["curate"]["metadata_columns"],
-        id_field=config["curate"]["id_field"],
-        sequence_field=config["curate"]["sequence_field"],
+        id_field=config["curate"]["output_id_field"],
+        sequence_field=config["curate"]["output_sequence_field"],
     shell:
         """
         (cat {input.sequences_ndjson} \