A field guide to
four little worlds_

01 / OPEN THE NOTEBOOK

Your first reading

Send a GET request to https://braigetori.org/api/observatory. The default is seven days of hourly observations for all four worlds. The archive began September 12, 2026; choosing a longer window does not create earlier measurements.

curl --fail --get 'https://braigetori.org/api/observatory' \
  --data-urlencode 'view=worlds' \
  --data-urlencode 'world=all' \
  --data-urlencode 'days=7'

Choose “Take a reading” to query the public archive.

02 / PICK AN INSTRUMENT

Seven datasets, different questions

Always inspect truncated. A limit is a limit, not evidence that the underlying world has no more records. Directory paging is the way to retrieve the full latest server directory.

03 / TURN THE DIALS

The query vocabulary

Supply each parameter once. Unknown parameters, invalid values and repeated parameters return HTTP 400. URL-encode values. All dates and archive windows use UTC.

Parameters outside their dataset’s scope have no effect. For example, resolution does not turn daily server history into hourly history. A history request requires both an exact host and a single world.

04 / READ THE MARKINGS

Response anatomy

{
  "version": 1,
  "generated": 1789225200,
  "filters": {"view": "worlds", "world": "all", "days": 7, "…": "…"},
  "status": {"last_success": 1789224900, "failed_worlds": [], "…": "…"},
  "metrics": {"indexed": ["Indexed URLs", "Definition…"], "…": "…"},
  "rows": [{"at": 1789224900, "world": "gemini", "indexed": 1234, "…": "…"}],
  "count": 1,
  "truncated": false,
  "retention": {"hourly_days": 90, "daily_world_days": 730, "…": "…"},
  "notes": ["Dataset-specific methods and limitations…"]
}

Illustrative, abbreviated structure above; 1,234 is an example, not a live count. The live reader shows actual values.

generated vs. at

Unix seconds: report generation time versus observation time. Cached reports can have an older generation time. Use row at for analysis.

status

Last attempt/success, failed worlds, synthetic marker, daily store-check time and outcome. A null integrity outcome means unknown. Latest successful data can remain available after a failed round.

indexed, distinct, duplicates, unknown_hashes

Searchable URL count; distinct known content hashes within a world; additional copies of those hashes; URLs without hashes. The last three reconcile to indexed URLs. They are not counts of authors.

destinations, known, queue

Indexed server addresses; known resources including unindexed ones; pending Gemini queue entries or due resources in other worlds. Queue populations differ across protocols.

fetched_24h, changed_24h, errors

Resources successfully fetched within 24 hours; indexed resources whose last observed content change falls in 24 hours; known resources currently carrying a failure. These are not visit counts or publication dates.

duplicate_pct, hash_coverage_pct, error_pct, fresh_pct

Duplicate/indexed, known-hash/indexed, failures/known and fetched/known percentages. A zero denominator yields null, not zero.

World rows

at, world, group, method_version plus defined metrics. Older method 1 observations precede the added reconciliation checks; method 2 records validated collection.

Server rows

at, world, host, group and available count metrics. The JSON metric dictionary defines measures; a field may be absent or null when unavailable.

Topic rows

at, day, world, word, n, sample, rate, group. Count n is title-document occurrences; sample is the sampled title denominator; rate is 100 × n/sample.

Link rows

at, day, world, source, target, n, group. Source is a host; target includes the destination protocol. Count n is sampled links, not traffic.

Demand rows

day, selection, channel, word, outcome, n, at, group. Selections can overlap. Bots and repeats can contribute; do not sum cells into people.

Quality rows

at, world, ok, seconds, reason. Failed rounds retain previous measurements. Reasons are bounded public categories.

05 / SMALL EXPEDITIONS

Questions worth taking outside

Download a full server directory with Python

This standard-library example reads all pages and checks their collection round and keys. If collection changes during paging, start again after the round completes.

import json
from urllib.parse import urlencode
from urllib.request import urlopen

base = "https://braigetori.org/api/observatory?"
rows, rounds, totals = [], set(), set()
for page in range(1000):
    query = urlencode(dict(view="places", order="host", page=page))
    with urlopen(base + query, timeout=20) as response:
        report = json.load(response)
    rows.extend(report["rows"])
    rounds.add(report["status"]["last_success"])
    totals.add(report["total"])
    if len(rows) >= report["total"]:
        break
assert len(rounds) == len(totals) == 1, "Collection changed; retry"
assert len({(r["world"], r["host"]) for r in rows}) == len(rows)
assert len(rows) == totals.pop(), "Directory incomplete"
with open("braigetori-servers.json", "w") as output:
    json.dump(rows, output, indent=2)

For analysis, join on world and observation time, preserve missing values, and inspect collection gaps before calculating differences. The observatory laboratory offers regression, Pearson/Spearman correlation, smoothing and exports. Fits describe the observations; they do not establish causation or predict community growth.

06 / KNOW YOUR INSTRUMENT

Limits that belong beside the data

• Hourly world observations: 90 days. Daily world summaries: 730 days. Daily servers, topics and links: 90 days. Published demand: 30 days. Daily points are last measured values, not daily sums; today is provisional.
• Worlds are collected separately, not in one simultaneous source-database snapshot. A report has a consistent analytics read, but separate requests can span collection rounds.
• Titles use a nonrandom, known-hash-deduplicated sample of at most 5,120 titles/world from 16 ID windows. The collector retains the top 500 words/day; the unfiltered public topic report returns the top 100. An absent word is unknown, not zero.
• Links are sampled from active Gemini links or saved cross-world leads. They are not the complete graph and do not measure clicks.
• Search signals are frozen after each UTC day closes, for reviewed-word cells with at least five received events. Empty reports do not mean nobody searched. No raw queries, visitor identities or private totals are published.
• Each response is limited to 4 MiB. SQLite reads have a two-second execution deadline; at most two reports execute concurrently. An eight-report cache lasts 30 seconds. Reuse downloaded data and avoid rapid polling.

The endpoint supports public GET reports, not arbitrary SQL or administrative commands. Browser access is same-origin; no cross-origin browser permission is promised. Scripts and notebooks can use ordinary HTTPS. Save the returned filters, metric definitions and notes alongside your rows so the evidence stays interpretable.

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