gods-eye-view/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to God's Eye View

Thanks for being here. God's Eye View is an open foundation for live spatial intelligence in the browser, and it gets better when more people run it, break it, and extend it.

Getting set up

Use Node.js 24.14.x or 26.x (also enforced by package.json).

git clone https://github.com/bilawalsidhu/gods-eye-view.git
cd gods-eye-view
nvm install 24.14.0
nvm use 24.14.0
npm install
npm run doctor
./scripts/dev-fresh.sh        # or: npm run dev (keys are optional)

No key is required to start: the app boots on keyless Esri World Imagery with keyless terrain, and OSM takes over automatically if Esri is unreachable. Google Maps provides direct photorealistic 3D and place search; Cesium ion provides ion-hosted Google 3D plus optional Bing/world-terrain stacks. On macOS the launcher pulls optional keys from the Keychain; on any platform you can pass them as env vars or use a .env. People who only want to run the app can instead install the repository directly through Pinokio; the terminal path above remains the contributor path.

Open http://localhost:4173. Before sending a PR run npm run build, npm test, and npm run test:track (dev server must be up) — all three must stay green.

Checking a built app locally

Run npm run build followed by npm run preview. Preview serves the built frontend and local data-provider APIs. Keep optional server credentials in the ignored .env; browser keys are embedded during the build, so rebuild after changing them. Provider Settings and /api/setup/* are development-only: edit configuration through the development app or environment file. Unknown API paths return JSON 404 responses. Vite preview is for checking a local build; it is not a production server.

Feature regression gates

Those three are the baseline, not the whole story. Most features also have a dedicated headless gate under scripts/qa-*.mjs that drives the real app and asserts that feature's contract. Run the gate covering whatever you touched, and say which one you ran in the PR.

The scripts are the canonical list, and each one documents itself:

ls scripts/qa-*.mjs            # every gate
head -20 scripts/qa-radio.mjs  # what this gate proves, and how to run it

Every gate opens with a comment naming what it asserts. Most take --url http://localhost:<port> and need a dev server up; some need a specific provider key or a particular port, and the header says which. Run them directly with node scripts/qa-<name>.mjs; only a couple (qa:map-source-tray, qa:transit) have an npm run alias.

If you aren't sure which gate covers your change, search docs/CURRENT-STATE.md for the feature: it names the gate for many of them, and it's the authoritative runtime reference either way.

CI does not cover this for you. The workflow runs the setup policy checks, the formatting and package-boundary checks, the unit suite and the production build, plus a Windows onboarding job. It runs neither npm run test:track nor any qa-*.mjs gate — both need a live dev server and a browser. For anything outside the unit suite, your local run is the only check before it reaches main.

Good first contributions

The highest-leverage places to jump in:

• 🌆 Add a CCTV source pack. Austin is the reference camera source. Adding another city means a clean public camera catalog with coordinates, attribution, and server-registered frame URLs (the proxy only fetches registered URLs — never client-supplied ones, see SECURITY.md). City packs are the best first lane.
• 🛰️ Add or improve a data layer. Layer factories live in src/layers/<family>/, with source, record, controller and renderer owners implementing the layer interface (init/enable/disable/update/destroy/getStats, optional getDetectableObjects/getStats). Use an existing layer as a template.
• 🎙️ Extend voice control. Voice arguments are defined in src/voice/actionSchemas.js, with server-side descriptions in server/providers/openai/tools.js and client-side execution in src/voice/gevActions.js. Keep the tool surface tight and the responses honest (confirm only what actually happened).
• 🎨 Add a visual style. Styles are GLSL post-process shaders in src/styles/.
• 🐛 Fix bugs / improve the first-run experience. See docs/KNOWN-ISSUES.md.

Architecture in one minute

• No framework. Vanilla JS + CesiumJS + Vite.
• Assembly lives in src/app/; standalone defaults live in src/standalone/. UI controllers live in src/ui/, layer factories in src/layers/, portable sources in src/sources/, and application operations in src/services/. Existing src/ui.js and src/data/<layer>.js entries retain compatibility; new code belongs with its focused owner.
• Sources acquire records; renderers own Cesium resources. Import gods-eye-view/layers/<family>/source when only a source factory is needed. Common voice controls consume the session interface; protocol adapters own connection details.
• Secrets stay server-side. Anything needing a private key goes through a local proxy under server/providers/. The browser only ever sees the Google Maps key (which you restrict) and ephemeral tokens.
• docs/CURRENT-STATE.md is the authoritative runtime reference — read it first.

Coding style

• ES modules, 2-space indent, single quotes, semicolons.
• JSDoc on exported/public functions.
• Match the surrounding code — comment density, naming, and idiom.
• Prefer small, reviewable commits. Conventional-commit-style prefixes (feat:, fix:, perf:, docs:) are appreciated but not required.

Formatting and reusable components

Run npm run format before submitting changes, then npm run format:check and npm run check:boundaries. Runtime JavaScript under the owned roots in scripts/format-runtime.json is discovered automatically, including new files. Tests and other adopted files remain listed in scripts/format-scope.json. Git-ignored files and .prettierignore exclusions are not automatically adopted. Keep mechanical formatting separate from behavioral edits. CI checks formatting and package boundaries on Linux and Windows.

Reusable package exports own their state and receive application operations through explicit callbacks. They must not import the standalone bootstrap or local Node services. Update scripts/package-boundaries.json and consumer tests when adding an export or expanding a component. See formatting and component boundaries for the current ownership and adoption process.

Pull requests

1. Branch off main.
2. Keep npm run build, npm test, and npm run test:track green and avoid new console errors, plus the feature gate for the area you touched.
3. If you change runtime behavior, update docs/CURRENT-STATE.md and CHANGELOG.md in the same PR.
4. If you add or change a data source, update DATA_SOURCES.md with its license and attribution. Don't add data you don't have the right to redistribute — fetch it at runtime instead.
5. Describe what you changed and how you verified it (screenshots welcome for anything visual).

Maintainers

God's Eye View is maintained by Bilawal Sidhu and Sameh Khamis at Halfpixel. Either maintainer can review and merge contributions.

Ground rules

• This is a tool for public data. Don't add scraping of sources whose terms forbid it, private/paywalled datasets, or anything that misrepresents public-data inference as authoritative intelligence.
• Be decent to each other. Assume good faith, keep it constructive.

By contributing, you agree your contributions are licensed under the project's MIT License.