\documentclass[12pt]{article}

% Package imports should come before input statements
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvet}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{xcolor}  % Move this before the input statement
\usepackage{sectsty}

% Now include the jinja placeholders
\input{../assets/jinja_placeholders}

% Rest of your document configuration
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
\allsectionsfont{\sffamily}
\hypersetup{
    colorlinks=false,
    pdfborder={0 0 0}
}

\begin{document}
% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Define Variables ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ %

% Define custom colors from JSON
\definecolor{primaryColor}{HTML}{
    \VAR{primary_color}
}
\definecolor{primaryFaded}{HTML}{
    \VAR{primary_color_faded}
}

% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Document Begins Here ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ %

\thispagestyle{empty} % Remove page numbering
% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Header ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
\begin{center}
    \includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{../assets/caiac_logo.png}\\
    \vspace{0.5em}
    {\Large \textcolor[HTML]{333333}{\VAR{long_name}}}\\
    \vspace{0.5em}
    {\textcolor[HTML]{333333}{\VAR{time_period}}}
    \COMMENT{This is an example comment!}
\end{center}

\vspace{8em}

% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Main Title ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
\begin{center}
    [ \VAR{chron_info} ]\\
    \vspace{0.7em}
    {\Huge \textbf{\VAR{title}}}\\
    \vspace{0.7em}
    \uppercase{\VAR{subtitle}}
\end{center}

\vfill  % Push the following content to the bottom
% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Readings ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
\begin{center}
\begin{minipage}{0.8\textwidth}  % Create a minipage to contain the readings
\centering
\BLOCK{for reading in core_readings}
{\color{primaryFaded}
    {\footnotesize
        \VAR{reading.title}\\
        \emph{(\VAR{reading.author}, \VAR{reading.year})}
    }
}
\vspace{1em}
\BLOCK{endfor}
\end{minipage}
\end{center}

\vspace{2em}  % Add some space at the bottom margin

\end{document}