# Restaurant discovery and diary sources

This directory is an OpenStreetMap-derived database distributed under the
[Open Database License 1.0](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/).
© [OpenStreetMap contributors](https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright).
Download the current database at [places.json](places.json); automated refresh
health and source dates are in [directory-status.json](directory-status.json).

The September 2026 baseline contains **166 places** across seven Massachusetts
towns: Acton 36, Maynard 32, Littleton 16, Concord 33, Boxborough 2, Westford 41,
and Stow 6. This is a discovery seed, not the list of restaurants people have used. The query includes
restaurant, cafe, fast-food, bar, pub, ice-cream and food-court features inside
each town's administrative boundary. Five unnamed or disused records were
excluded. Bella's Great Road and Nan's Westford were added from official sites.
Repeated OSM identities are deduplicated; separate mapped features representing
the same business may still need review.

This is community map coverage, not a complete or independently verified list of
operating businesses. Missing street addresses stay missing; directions use the
source coordinates where available. A successful import does not establish that
a business is still operating. No third-party ratings or reviews are copied.

## Descriptions and amenities

All listings have a short factual description derived from their mapped cuisine,
location and available service information. These describe facts, not editorial
recommendations or an assertion that someone visited. Twenty-three listings have
original editorial descriptions checked against official business sources; each
includes those source links and its separate `checked` date. Corrections live in
`data/overrides.json` so subsequent imports preserve them.

The import retains cuisine, raw mapped opening hours, phone and menu links, plus
known takeaway, delivery, outdoor seating, wheelchair access, vegetarian and
vegan tags. Unknown information is omitted. `no`, `limited` and `only` stay
distinct from `yes`; missing does not mean unavailable. Availability can change,
and dietary/accessibility tags are not guarantees. Opening-hour expressions are
shown as source information, not used to claim “open now.” The editorial checked
date does not mean every OSM amenity was independently confirmed.

Official-source additions and descriptions include Nan's, Great Road Kitchen,
Masala Bay, Taka, Oscar's Burritos, Fourth & Field, Erikson's, Gigi's, Azúcar,
Woods Hill Table, Eva's Little Kitchen, Bedford Farms, Seoul Kitchen, Muffins on
Main, DiCapri and West Side Creamery, alongside the six original Acton entries.
Links are on individual records. Nan's Stow address follows the official homepage
and ordering page (271 Great Road); a conflicting address on another official
location page is documented in its source note. Two unusable OSM website links
were omitted with reasons retained. We do not infer closure from a broken website.

## Discovery and freshness

The public catalog contains places with visits or explicit saves. Restaurant
identities are retained after entries are removed, so old links remain usable.
The regional OSM seed remains searchable without spending provider requests;
its exhaustive weekly refresh is disabled. The importer and validated refresh
scripts remain available for deliberate operator updates.

Open Places API is queried only when someone explicitly requests more nearby
results. Normal typing and browsing make no provider calls. Results are cached
for 30 days by normalized query and location, with no automatic pagination.
Production permits at most 100 uncached requests per UTC day across the service.
Failures preserve local search and manual additions. Source identities and
[provider attribution](https://openplacesapi.com/data-rights) accompany imported
places; provider results are separate from the OSM seed download.

The logo worker checks the used catalog daily, and only fetches websites whose
logo checks are new or at least 30 days old. An empty catalog causes no website
downloads. API failures do not fall back to crawling the entire seed. This does
not verify opening hours or business operating status.

Names and factual business details are stored with links; editorial descriptions
are original. The merged database download is under ODbL. Source code, artwork
and third-party logos are separate from that database license. The hero food
image is generated illustration, not a photo of Bella's or another listed business.

Visits are separate from directory data and are not included in places.json.
New public diary entries use `site.standard.document` with `at.eaten.visit` content in each author's own
ATproto repository, with a separate local index. Retired letseat reviews are excluded from the new diary; their original PDS
records are not automatically deleted or republished. Each visit can have
an optional rating; restaurant averages weight each person's average equally.

Old browser drafts and saved hearts are not automatically published or uploaded.
New explicit catalog additions/saves are stored by this service. Public visits
may be copied by other apps and retained after deletion. The index covers enrolled
accounts rather than the entire network; external changes normally refresh hourly
and may take longer during outages or bandwidth caps.