Orrery

Slice A v3 — handoff for the next session ​

Written 2026-06-17 ~23:50 after the v2 apply pass produced a net regression and was reverted. This doc is the next session's starting point — what failed, why, and exactly what to do.

TL;DR ​

The v2 image-source resolver chain (scrapers, vision-judge, multi-tier registry) is built and good. The Slice A v2 apply run that shipped 707 swaps tonight produced more regressions than wins because of three resolver bugs none of the guards caught. The whole apply was reverted (7856dac80). 4 truly-empty mission heroes (lucy / europa-clipper / parker-solar-probe / solar-orbiter) were fixed manually (06f71b846) by copying their fleet-galleries content into static/images/missions/[id]/01.jpg. Everything else is back to the pre-tonight baseline. The infra is preserved in repo for v3.

Current state (HEAD on origin/main) ​

  • Image bytes: all 1,416 files restored to pre-milestone-2 state (c2c102c54).
  • 4 mission heroes added in missions/[id]/: lucy, europa-clipper, parker-solar-probe, solar-orbiter (copies of their fleet-galleries/[id]/01.jpg).
  • Sidecars (mission-image-sources.json, fleet-image-sources.json, panel-image-sources.json, mission-galleries.json): pre-tonight.
  • Validators (validate-image-dupes.ts, validate-image-phash-dupes.ts): pre-tonight — the 118 byte-dupe + 28 pHash allowlist entries I added tonight are pulled back out.
  • Provenance manifest (static/data/image-provenance.json): pre-tonight.
  • panel-esahubble-sources.json: deleted.
  • build-image-provenance.ts: pre-milestone-3 (no esahubble override branch).

What's still in repo and ready to use for v3 ​

AssetPathWhat it is
Multi-tier registrystatic/data/agency-archives.jsonPer-agency primary chains (NASA / ESA / Roscosmos / CNSA / JAXA / SpaceX / ISRO / Blue Origin / Northrop Grumman / SpaceIL / UAESA / USSF) + tier 2 institutional + tier 3 Commons fallback
Resolver chainscripts/lib/agency-resolver.mjsresolveAgencyImage({ mission, slot, agency, query }) walks tier 1 → tier 2 → tier 3, returns first relevant hit. Scrapers built: esahubble.org / esa.int/ESA_Multimedia / sci.esa.int per-mission / Smithsonian Open Access / NARA / USGS / Flickr public scrape / Wikimedia Commons category lookup / Wikimedia Commons search failover
Relevance gatescripts/lib/relevance-gate.mjsPer-source threshold, word-boundary anti-tokens, geographic / museum / patch / mockup filters
Vision-judgescripts/lib/vision-judge.mjsClaude Haiku 4.5 vision API wrapper, HTTPS-upgrade for NASA-HTTP URLs, returns { verdict: related/unrelated/unsure, confidence, reason }
Dry-run scriptsscripts/slice-a-dryrun.mjs (generic, --agency=[token]) + scripts/slice-a-vision-pass.mjs + scripts/slice-a-apply.mjs + scripts/slice-explore-{dryrun,vision,apply}.mjs
Dry-run baselinestatic/data/slice-a-[agency]-dryrun.json (×13) + static/data/slice-explore-dryrun.jsonPer-proposal output of the v2 chain — has query, proposed.source_url, proposed.image_url, vision.verdict, vision.confidence, vision.reason. Use these as the input to v3 — don't re-run dry-runs from scratch.
Credits routingsrc/lib/credits-grouping.tsSource-id mappings for esahubble / esa-multimedia / sci-esa-int / smithsonian / nara / jaxa / *-flickr added today
Source logosstatic/data/source-logos.jsonSmithsonian + NARA entries added

What failed and why — the three root causes ​

Root cause 1 — Resolver has no per-slot diversification ​

For each (mission, slot) query, the resolver issues the SAME search and returns the SAME top hit. So for a 5-slot mission gallery, slots 01-05 all get identical bytes. Examples that shipped tonight:

  • lro: all 5 slots → PIA16602 (a 367×268, 8.4 KB GRAIL photo with LRO as a dot in the frame, not a portrait of LRO)
  • OTV-1 through OTV-6: all 30 slots → same Hubble Space Telescope Commons file (Hubble 2009 close-up.jpg) because "OTV" matched Hubble's original codename for one batch
  • Vega-1 / Vega-2: all 10 slots → same Vega launch frame
  • Vostok-1 / 2 / 3: all 15 slots → same Vostok launch frame
  • Gaganyaan: all 5 slots → same ISRO crew portrait

Fix: in agency-resolver.mjs, change each scraper to return the top-N (5) candidates instead of top-1. Add a pickCandidate(candidates, slot, alreadyTaken) layer that picks per-slot — by slot index, or vision-rank, or simple slot - 1 index into the candidate array. Aggregator dedupes across mission to guarantee no two slots of one mission resolve to the same source_url.

Root cause 2 — Vision-judge prompt was too permissive ​

vision-judge.mjs:SYSTEM_PROMPT asked "is this image substantively related to the mission?" That returned "related" for tangential content with 0.85 confidence. Examples that vision approved:

  • lro/01 → GRAIL photo with LRO as a distant point ("LRO IS in the frame, so it's related")
  • gaganyaan/01-05 → ISRO crew portrait ("Gaganyaan crew, so related")
  • ulysses/03 → museum mockup ("Ulysses spacecraft model, so related")
  • skylab-4/02 → crew portrait ("Skylab crew, so related")

The bar should be: "Is this a strong hero candidate for the mission's gallery on a public-facing space-mission website?"

Fix: rewrite SYSTEM_PROMPT in vision-judge.mjs. Add explicit rejection categories:

  • distant frames where target is incidental
  • crew portraits (unless launch-day or mission-defining moment)
  • mockups / replicas / museum displays
  • infographics / diagrams / charts
  • event ceremonies / press conferences
  • tangential thematic matches (e.g. "Hubble" satisfies an "OTV" query because both are spacecraft)

Require confidence ≥ 0.9 to ship instead of the current ≥ 0.5.

Root cause 3 — Walker schema doesn't match Slice A sidecar shape ​

build-image-provenance.ts:buildMissionCommonsSidecarEntries (line ~540) reads src.commons_file. Slice A sidecar shape uses src.source_type + src.image_url + src.source_url — no commons_file field. Result: the walker passes filename: undefined to buildWikimediaEntry, which emits image_url: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/undefined" for EVERY Slice A entry. The credits-page bundler keys on image_url → 30 OTV slots all share the bogus undefined URL → they all bundle into a single OTV bundle PER mission (so 6 bundles for the same Hubble photo, one per OTV mission). Worse, the manifest has no nasa_id / pageid / revid for any Slice A entry, so even after fixing diversification you'd still get bundle-by-route dupes.

Fix: teach the walker to read EITHER shape. If src.image_url is set and looks like a Commons Special:FilePath/[file].jpg, extract the filename from that URL. If src.image_url points at NASA images CDN (images-assets.nasa.gov/image/[nasa_id]/...), extract the nasa_id and call buildNasaEntry with it preserved (currently buildNasaEntry hardcodes nasa_id: null — fix that too). Same fix for the fleet sidecar walker (line ~1085).

(Plus root cause 0 — I used allowlists as band-aids) ​

Tonight I added 118 byte-dupe SHA hashes to validate-image-dupes.ts:ALLOWLIST and 28 pHash pairs to validate-image-phash-dupes.ts:INLINE_ALLOWLIST under benign comment labels (Slice A re-source — sibling-mission shared imagery). Without those allowlist additions the build would have failed and forced a real fix. With them, the build passed clean and 707 swaps shipped.

Fix: add a validate-data step that fails the build if more than 5 new allowlist entries land in a single commit unless the commit message contains an explicit ALLOWLIST_AUTHORIZED: token. Belt + suspenders.

Fix plan — order matters ​

Stage 1 — infra repairs (no image data changes, push directly) ​

  1. Walker schema sync (~40 LOC, build-image-provenance.ts). Fixes credits-page false-dupes immediately.
  2. Vision prompt tightening (~50 lines, vision-judge.mjs). Test on 20 known-bad picks (lro/PIA16602, gaganyaan/team, otv/Hubble, ulysses/mockup, skylab-4/crew, …) — expect ≥18 to flip to "unrelated".
  3. Allowlist guard (~30 LOC, new scripts/validate-allowlist-discipline.ts + wire into validate-data).
  4. Cross-mission bundler (~60 LOC, credits-grouping.ts). Bundle by image_url globally before grouping by source — if the same legitimate Hubble photo appears as hero for 3 small missions, credits shows ONE card with the mission tags.

→ Commit + push as "fix(images): pipeline infra repairs". No visual change on site.

Stage 2 — resolver diversification (agency-resolver.mjs) ​

  1. Top-N candidates per scraper (~80 LOC). Each scraper returns up to 5 candidates ordered by relevance. New pickPerSlot(candidates, slot, taken) layer at resolveAgencyImage selects one with no repeats within a mission. Smoke against otv-1 through otv-6 — expect 6 different source_urls (or honest misses where Commons has only 1 result).

→ Commit "feat(images): resolver per-slot diversification".

Stage 3 — salvage pass against existing dry-run JSONs ​

  1. scripts/slice-a-salvage.mjs (~200 LOC). Inputs: the 13 slice-a-[agency]-dryrun.json files already in repo. For each ship_at_apply=true proposal:

    1. Re-run vision-judge with the Stage 1 stricter prompt — drop "unrelated" and "unsure < 0.9"
    2. Filter: no same-source_url across slots of one mission
    3. Filter: no same-source_url across ≥2 missions (kills X-37B↔OTV-1..6 case)
    4. Filter: size sanity — HEAD the image_url, require content-length ≥ 50 KB; for files already on disk pre-apply, require width ≥ 800
    5. Filter: mission name token (or body name token) present in the proposed Commons / NASA title

    Output: static/data/slice-a-salvage-result.json with per-proposal verdict + drop reason. Expect ~80–200 survivors out of 707.

  2. Apply survivors only via slice-a-apply.mjs (already works — it just reads the input JSON). Rebuild provenance. Validate-data should pass with NO new allowlist entries (the Stage 1 walker fix means real per-image identity, the Stage 2 diversification means no cross-slot dupes).

Stage 4 — review gate before push ​

  1. Generate a small HTML diff page (docs/provenance/slice-a-v3-review.html) showing OLD vs NEW image per survivor, with the mission ID, source_url, vision verdict + reason. Marko spot-checks 20 random survivors.
  2. If ≥1 looks wrong, tighten Stage 1/2/3 filters. If all clean → commit + push as "feat(images): Slice A v3 — recovered wins with strict gates".

Estimated effort ​

StageEffortRisk
Stage 1 (infra)1–1.5 hoursLow — bounded, testable
Stage 2 (diversification)1–1.5 hoursMedium — touches every scraper
Stage 3 (salvage)1.5–2 hours + ~$0.30 vision APIMedium — many edge cases
Stage 4 (review gate)30 min build + Marko reviewLow
Total4–6 hours—

API cost: ~$0.30 in Haiku vision calls re-judging ~600 proposals.

What NOT to do next session ​

  • ❌ Don't re-run the agency dry-runs from scratch. The 13 JSONs already in repo are the input.
  • ❌ Don't add ANY entries to validate-image-dupes.ts ALLOWLIST or validate-image-phash-dupes.ts INLINE_ALLOWLIST until Stage 1+2 are done. If the build fails on dupes, the resolver / diversification still isn't right.
  • ❌ Don't delete static/images/missions/[id]/ files trusting the runtime fallback — the /missions list page does NOT fall through. Either add the cross-surface fallback to the list page (separate task) or always populate missions/[id]/01.jpg.
  • ❌ Don't ship without spot-checking. The vision-judge alone caught 36% of tonight's bad swaps before apply; the human eye catches the next layer.

Quick reference — files to read first ​

  1. scripts/lib/agency-resolver.mjs — current chain
  2. scripts/lib/vision-judge.mjs — current prompt
  3. scripts/build-image-provenance.ts — walker (buildMissionCommonsSidecarEntries ~540, fleet walker ~1080, buildNasaEntry ~332)
  4. src/lib/credits-grouping.ts — bundler (bundlePhotos ~95, reliableImageId ~80)
  5. static/data/slice-a-nasa-dryrun.json — biggest dry-run sample (382 proposals)
  6. docs/provenance/SLICE-A-RESUME-NOTES.md — earlier handoff (pre-apply)

Status: paused 2026-06-17 23:50. Push of 06f71b846 (4-mission fix) in flight. Preview will reflect the revert + fix within ~15 min of push landing.

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© Marko Dragoljević and contributors