The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

A crowd-powered map of meaningful places: cafes, food spots, parks, museums, and other tiny perfect things discovered by real people.

Organization

• Creators and maintainers: Dea Bardhoshi and Harshvardhan
• Creator websites: https://deabardhoshi.com/ and https://blog.harsh17.in/
• Mission: document places that feel memorable, not just highly rated
• Contribution model: open submissions + maintainer review

Monorepo Structure

• map/
  • Public web app (React + Leaflet)
  • Netlify-hosted no-login forms for place submissions and feature requests
  • Native no-login chat page (/chat) with retrieval + Netlify Function backed by OpenAI
• master_data/
  • Source-of-truth dataset (master_data.csv, master_data.json)
• data_creation/
  • Data ingestion notebooks/scripts for moderation and merge workflows
  • Includes Netlify form export script
• chatbot/
  • Local RAG experimentation utilities (Ollama + Chroma + Streamlit)

What Changed

1. Submission flow moved off Google Forms

• Replaced with Netlify Forms (/submit) so users do not need GitHub or any login.
• Added feature request form (/feature) with same no-login approach.

2. Creator override on form

• The form has maintainer-only options for creator recommendations.
• Overrides are validated server-side during ingestion via secret access codes, not public name checks.
• Requests are still reviewed before dataset merge.

3. Native hosted chat

• New /chat page in the web app (no user login required).
• Retrieval happens on submitted data.
• Generation uses Netlify Function + OpenAI API key from deployment secrets.
• Fallback mode still returns retrieval-based recommendations if model call fails.

4. UI refresh

• New light pixel-art interface, mobile-friendly layout, and component-focused intro panel.

Deployment (Netlify)

map/ is designed for automatic Netlify deploys on push.

Required Netlify env vars

• OPENAI_API_KEY (for map/netlify/functions/ask-ava.mjs)

Optional env vars

• OPENAI_MODEL (default: gpt-5.2)

Local Development

Web app

cd map
npm install
npm start

Production build check

cd map
npm run build

Tests

cd map
CI=true npm test

Submission Moderation + Data Merge

This is now automated.

• Workflow: .github/workflows/auto-sync-submissions.yml
• Schedule: every 6 hours (and manual workflow_dispatch)
• Output: an auto PR with updated submission export + master dataset + map dataset copy + city docs

Required GitHub Action secrets:

• NETLIFY_ACCESS_TOKEN
• NETLIFY_SITE_ID
• CREATOR_ACCESS_CODES (comma-separated maintainer codes for creator override validation)

If NETLIFY_ACCESS_TOKEN or NETLIFY_SITE_ID is missing, the workflow run succeeds but skips ingestion and PR creation.

Optional secret:

• GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY (if missing, fallback geocoding still runs via Nominatim)

Optional email notifications (sent only when new rows are ingested and a PR is created/updated):

• NOTIFY_SMTP_SERVER
• NOTIFY_SMTP_PORT
• NOTIFY_SMTP_USERNAME
• NOTIFY_SMTP_PASSWORD
• NOTIFY_SMTP_FROM

Manual fallback command:

python data_creation/auto_ingest_submissions.py

Notebook data_creation/02_add_new_places.qmd is now optional/manual-only.

Local Chatbot Utilities

Production chat is in map/, but local experiments remain in chatbot/.

pip install -r chatbot/requirements.txt
python chatbot/ingest.py
streamlit run chatbot/main.py

Security Status

• Dependency updates were applied and critical vulnerabilities are currently 0 in the web app audit.
• Remaining high/moderate findings are primarily from the legacy react-scripts toolchain.

Contribution Guidelines

• Use no-login forms in the app for place submissions and feature requests.
• For code changes, open PRs with focused commits and test/build evidence.
• Keep master_data/ as the canonical data source.