About

Geospatial tools that keep your data in your browser

Cell & Shape is an independent geospatial-tool project for developers, GIS practitioners, and map-minded communities. It combines a tested geometry engine with focused reference pages: paste a geometry, inspect it, validate it, convert it, or compare spatial indexes without uploading the geometry to a server.

What guides the project

Private by architecture

Parsing, validation, conversion, cell calculations and map overlays run in the browser. Shareable tool state lives after the # in the URL, so browsers do not send it in the page request. The privacy page documents the few external requests that map pages make.

Standards before guesses

Geometry behavior is implemented from primary specifications and reference-library documentation: RFC 7946, OGC Simple Features, the encoded-polyline algorithm, and the H3 and S2 project docs. Ambiguity is surfaced instead of silently resolved.

Reproducible explanations

Guide examples come from the same codecs and fixtures as the tools. Size comparisons expose their literal inputs, invalid examples show the engine's actual error messages, and factual references link to their source material.

Editorial and technical review process

Start with a concrete search question or tool task rather than a broad topic.
Check technical claims against primary standards or the owning project's documentation.
Run examples through the production engine and add fixture or functional coverage.
Build the fully static site, type-check it, run unit tests, then exercise the real browser bundle.
Show publication and significant-update dates on long-form reference pages.

Community-reverse-engineered game mechanics are handled separately: they are labeled as unofficial, carry confidence caveats, show a last-verified date, and link the community sources used for that verification.

Inspect the implementation

The site's source, geometry fixtures and automated tests are available in the Cell & Shape GitHub repository. That makes the privacy boundary and the methodology behind the reference pages independently inspectable.