🪐 Companion Atlas

Explore a life as a place and a timeline. Companion Atlas turns located Companion Memory events into a navigable globe, then lets you collect moments into a scrapbook and play them as a journey on a desktop, phone, or WebXR headset.

Product shape

Atlas has one story model and three presentation surfaces:

The viewer can load a published companion.atlas/story@1 document or query a connected Companion Memory for located memories. A story is the portable, shareable unit; a live Memory connection is the private archive behind it.

Presentation surfaces

3

Desktop browser, mobile browser, and WebXR, over one story model.

from Product shape

Located memories per page

100

The live GraphQL query pages Companion Memory results 100 at a time.

from Connect to local Companion Memory

Located-memory cap

2,000

The client stops here and only warns in the console when the server reports more.

from Known gaps

Both sources feed the same story model, and the scrapbook writes back out as a story:

flowchart LR
    S["Published story<br/>companion.atlas/story@1"] -->|"?story=url"| M["Story model"]
    C["Companion Memory<br/>located memories"] -->|"GraphQL via ?memory=<br/>100 per page"| M
    M --> D["Desktop browser<br/>Cesium globe"]
    M --> P["Mobile browser<br/>responsive Cesium shell"]
    M --> X["WebXR<br/>Three.js globe"]
    M --> B["Scrapbook"]
    B -->|"Download .story.json"| S
    B -->|"Save to Memory<br/>atlas-story event"| C

Open the viewer

Safe demo story

Run the viewer from a source checkout (npm install, then npm run dev; it serves on port 4174 by default) and open the bundled story with the URL below. The empty memory parameter intentionally disables any build-time Memory connection so the result is safe to share:

http://127.0.0.1:4174/?memory=&story=/stories/sample-pacific-journey.json&renderer=cesium

The same story is available over a Tailscale hostname when the dev server is bound to the tailnet. Replace only the host in the URL; do not add credentials to a published link.

Connect to local Companion Memory

Use a same-origin dev proxy when Companion Memory is running locally:

http://127.0.0.1:4174/?memory=/memory&renderer=cesium

The viewer sends a located-memory GraphQL query through /memory, pages up to 100 results at a time, restores chronological order, and maps the response to the story model. The development proxy target is configured with VITE_DEV_MEMORY_PROXY, for example http://localhost:5173/api when the Companion Memory web app is the local gateway.

For a direct Companion Memory origin, use ?memory=<memory-origin> and provide a session cookie, ?token=<jwt>, or ?apiKey=<key> as appropriate for the local environment. Tokens and API keys must stay in local environment configuration or a private session: the Share control removes memory, token, and apiKey from the copied URL. When a live Memory request is unauthorized, the viewer now offers an in-viewer sign-in/retry path. It exchanges the server’s CSRF-protected credentials for a short-lived bearer kept in the current browser tab; it never adds credentials to a share URL. Portal OIDC redirect login remains a separate integration item.

WebXR emulator

The development-only Quest 3 emulator makes the immersive path testable in a normal browser:

http://127.0.0.1:4174/?memory=&story=/stories/sample-pacific-journey.json&renderer=xr&xremu=quest3

?xremu=quest2, ?xremu=questPro, and ?xremu=generic are also accepted. The emulator is never installed in production and is skipped when a real immersive device is available.

Function inventory

Data and navigation

Search and time

Map and media

Scrapbook and sharing

People and immersive controls

Platform guidance

Desktop

The desktop shell is the richest review surface: it keeps the rail, top-bar actions, inspector, globe, and time machine visible together. Use it for archive-wide review, curation, and diagnosing a live Companion Memory connection.

Mobile

The reference capture is 390 × 844. The responsive shell keeps navigation in a bottom rail and lets the inspector scroll independently. The initial viewport prioritizes the selected memory; Fly here and Collect are below the fold on a phone, so the location-action screenshot intentionally captures the scrolled state. The compact 320px layout has no horizontal overflow, but the mobile flow still needs iOS Safari, Android Chrome, and soft-keyboard validation before release sign-off.

WebXR

The emulator verifies that the XR renderer mounts, presents a globe and memory cards, exposes VR/AR entry points, and renders a controller. It is an emulator smoke test, not evidence of comfort, tracking, passthrough, or text legibility on a physical headset. Validate Quest 3, a WebXR-capable desktop browser, and at least one browser with no WebXR support before release.

Screenshots

Every image below is a fresh demo-data capture from the Codex browser on 2026-09-02. Desktop and mobile images are 1280 × 720 and 390 × 844 respectively. The XR images are 1280 × 720 and use ?xremu=quest3.

Desktop

Mobile

WebXR

Known gaps and release plan

P0 — make live data trustworthy

• Add refresh/logout and expiry handling around the current in-viewer sign-in bridge. The viewer no longer depends on a build-time bearer for an initial recovery, but its tab-scoped access token is still short-lived.
• Surface the Companion Memory result count and pagination state in the UI. The client currently stops at a hard cap of 2,000 located memories and only warns in the console when the server reports more.
• Add explicit live connection, expired-session, CORS, and empty-located-memory states to the release checklist and end-to-end suite.

P1 — remove interaction surprises

• Keep the primary location actions reachable without guesswork on 320 × 568 and 390 × 844 viewports; test the inspector with the keyboard visible.
• Make date search match its promise. The current palette handles text and numeric year matching more reliably than natural-language dates.
• Keep the visible success/failure status for Copy link and cover it with a browser-level accessibility assertion in the release suite.
• Either implement the advertised gallery route or remove view=gallery from links and documentation until it has a distinct view.

P1 — validate real devices and accessibility

• Run the same scenarios on iOS Safari, Android Chrome, a desktop browser without WebXR, and a physical Quest 3. Include screen-reader, keyboard-only, reduced-motion, contrast, focus-order, and touch-target checks.
• Measure Cesium/XR bundle size and first interactive render on a mid-range phone; the current production build emits large-chunk warnings.
• Exercise media absence, weather availability, place history, live People groups, save success, save failure, and offline/reconnect transitions with controlled fixtures.

P2 — make the story loop legible

• Add analytics or local diagnostics for load source, search completion, collection, curation, save, and download outcomes without collecting private memory content.
• Document story-schema versioning, supported media URLs, Google imagery attribution, and the difference between a user’s media and Street View.
• Add a repeatable screenshot matrix to release CI so desktop, mobile, and XR regressions are caught before publishing docs.

Verification evidence

The current source-level and runtime checks for this pass were:

• Viewer tests: 17 files, 198 passed.
• Story-schema tests: 7 files, 36 passed.
• Server tests: 5 files, 22 passed.
• Viewer typecheck, viewer build, root build, and server build passed.
• Visual suite: 16 of 16 passed.
• Share-link safety smoke: a dummy apiKey parameter was removed from the copied URL in the Codex browser.
• git diff --check passed.
• Codex-browser smoke: authenticated live sign-in and reload recovery, desktop demo flow, 390 × 844 and compact 320px mobile flows, and Quest 3 WebXR emulator baseline / VR / controller / flat drag-and-zoom states were exercised.

These results establish a documented demo path, not release sign-off for live private data or physical hardware. Keep the Companion Atlas source repository (private) and the Companion Memory server documentation aligned as the integration contract evolves.