Configure launches

Every builder reads the same site catalogue. Pass its path with --sites; the CLI resolves it to an absolute path for that dispatch, so the file lives wherever your project keeps it.

Catalogue shape

Since schemaVersion 2 the catalogue is identity and build selection only — humans author WHERE, and nothing physical. The forecast engine measures elevation, terrain, and land cover at those coordinates and publishes them in site-context.json.

sites.json

{
  "schemaVersion": 2,
  "sites": [
    {
      "slug": "test-hill",
      "name": "Test Hill",
      "latitude": 49.0,
      "longitude": -117.0,
      "timeZone": "America/Vancouver"
    }
  ]
}

The catalogue must satisfy sitesCatalogueSchema from @azohra/meteo.briefing/contract or the generated briefing/schema/sites.schema.json artifact, and is published to the dataset root verbatim.

Field	Meaning
schemaVersion	Site-catalogue contract version; 2
slug	Stable lowercase, hyphenated identity used in output paths
name	Reader-facing launch name
latitude, longitude	Decimal degrees
timeZone	IANA timezone used to read local days and clock times

No elevation of any kind lives here

v1 carried a hand-typed elevationM; the forecast engine now rejects any file that includes it (or any other unknown field) with a pointer to the measured replacement. The launch elevation is site-context.json’s elevation pick, measured from ground observations at the catalogued coordinates; each profile records the sampled grid terrain separately as site.modelElevationM.

Add a site safely

1. Choose a stable slug. Renaming it changes every profile and history path.

2. Record coordinates from an appropriate source for your launches. Do not record elevation anywhere — the engine measures it in the next step.

3. Declare the launch’s IANA timezone. Local time changes day windows and the meaning of timing findings, so builders echo this value into each profile as site.timeZone; do not infer it from longitude in presentation code.

4. Run the one-shot terrain measurement and commit site-context.json together with the catalogue change, so the published elevation, terrain, and land-cover context stays joined to the sites it describes:

   Terminal

   pnpm exec meteo forecast terrain --sites ./sites.json --output ./site-context.json

   The geospatial stack loads only when this command runs — a scheduled forecast build never pays for it. The command reads the --sites catalogue and rewrites the --output site-context file. Its shape, the elevation-pick priority, and its sources are in the site context reference.

5. Validate the whole file without fetching provider data:

   Terminal

   pnpm exec meteo forecast build --model hrrr-conus --sites ./sites.json --output ./public/data --dry-run

6. Run the chosen model. If any configured site falls outside that model’s sampling guard, the build fails with an out-of-grid error rather than publishing a clamped boundary value. Use a site catalogue appropriate to the selected model domain.

The catalogue chooses sampling locations and their local clocks. It does not choose audience, launch suitability, display windows, or access policy. Those belong to the downstream publisher.