Hexmap: Week 0x2D

It’s been 8 weeks since I touched Hexmap except to reactivate the Foursquare API worker after their brief outage caused it to pause. This is long enough to lose muscle memory for the build/run/test cycle, but it came back quickly.

I noticed my map, fed only by Swarm and Strava, had paths along the train route to Berlin. But I couldn’t find the source of this, and refused to “cheat” and query the database directly. So I had to finally add a detailed visits log to the hex detail page. Now, an authenticated user gets a list of dates and sources.

Of course, that list can be absurd for hexes like Amsterdam Centraal that I have visited more than 1000 days. So some rudimentary progressive loading was needed, which requires a new API endpoint, which means rigorous security checks, etc.

I leaned into Claude Sonnet 4.5 for this, which did a great job of following detailed instructions, but really had to be walked through date format alignments between Rust and Javascript, and aligning with patterns elsewhere in the codebase. I’m not convinced it saved me time in the long run, but I also enjoy the continuous learning on how to make use of generative agents.