Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for representing and processing inter-slot co-occurrence constraints on component selection for dynamically generated content items are disclosed. Components available for constructing the content items are organized into a hierarchy of categories. Co-occurrence constraints are specified in terms of categories in the hierarchy rather than explicit enumerated black-lists or white-lists at the component-to-component level. A set of processing rules based on the hierarchical taxonomy are used to expand a set of co-occurrence constraints specified in terms of categories into explicit enumerations of allowed component combinations, and to resolve potential conflicts in the set of co-occurrence constraints in a predictable manner. The explicit enumerations of allowed component combinations can be stored in a relational data table. When constructing a content item, candidate components can be obtained by querying the relational data table.