people-groups-grid caught a failed fetch, logged to the console and cleared its
loading flag. The template's `v-else-if="!displayedUUPGs.length"` branch then
rendered "No people groups match this filter." So when pray.doxa.life was
unreachable, the element told the reader their FILTER was wrong.
Measured by blocking that host in a browser: two console errors logged, and the
only thing on screen was the ordinary empty state. A user adjusts filters that
were never the problem; an operator glancing at the page sees normal operation.
The console held the truth and nobody opens it — least of all on a partner site
or inside the cap-4/cap-5 composites, which is exactly what this element is for.
Now distinguishes the two. A `loadFailed` ref drives its own branch: "People-group
data could not be loaded. This is a connection problem, not your filter."
Also checks response.ok, which was a second silent path. fetch() only rejects on
a NETWORK failure, so a 404, a 500 or an HTML error page all resolve — and
response.json() on them either throws into the same silent catch or yields an
object with no `posts`, which sets an empty grid and reports success. Both were
indistinguishable from "nothing matched".
Styling adds no colour: the palette is material-light only and --mut is what
this component already uses, so the failure line is separated by weight and a
hairline rather than an alarm state the design language does not have.
Verified both directions. Host blocked: the new message renders, no cards.
Host reachable: no message, the grid renders. And `bun run verify:gate1` still
passes 13/13 against 2,107 live records, including its "nonsense query -> 0
(empty-state path)" case — so genuine zero-match still works and is now a
different thing from a failed load.
Found by reading EXPLORE-dxlife-people-groups-refactor.md (2026-09-18) in the
staleness scan. Its PLAN is superseded — steps 1-5 describe editing DX-life's
own UupgsList.vue, which the standing law forbids and which this flight solved
by cloning instead. But its RISK register was still testable, and risk 3 named
this exactly: "external data dep on pray.doxa.life/api/people-groups/list". Half
of that was already mitigated — prayBaseUrl is injected three ways — and this
was the unmitigated half. Risk 6 ("FIVE dropdowns not four, confirm with the
Driver") is also settled: four are rendered.
A doc can be stale as a plan and still carry a live finding.
|
||
|---|---|---|
| .forgejo/workflows | ||
| .github/workflows | ||
| _archive/staging-surface-2026-09-22 | ||
| data | ||
| data-private | ||
| deployment | ||
| documentation | ||
| internal | ||
| library | ||
| plugin-designs | ||
| public | ||
| serving | ||
| skills/make-a-doxa-map | ||
| .env.example | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| bun.lock | ||
| capacitor.config.json | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| package.json | ||
| README.md | ||
| vite.config.js | ||
| vite.doxa-maps-build-config.json | ||
doxa-maps — one build, maps that embed everywhere
A Vite bundler that turns each map into a self-contained web component. Write a map in
plugin-designs/<your-map>/, run one build, and get a folder you can drop on any host — iframe it,
script-embed it, wrap it as a mobile app, or open every map at once as one SPA.
This README has three parts, in the order you need them:
- The 5 plugin capabilities — what you can build, simplest to richest.
- The 5 deployment methods — where a plugin can run.
- The Plugin Studio — ★ where you work. Start here if you are new.
1. The 5 plugin capabilities
A "capability" is how much a plugin nests — not how hard it is. Every screenshot below is a real bundle from this repo's build output.
| # | Capability | What it is | Example bundle |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Single element | One folder → one bundle → one custom element. | all-people-groups |
| 2 | Prop-table element | One root.vue + a preset table → many maps from one plugin. |
doxa-simple-map |
| 3 | Monolithic element | One root.vue nests many views internally → one element. |
doxa-research-map |
| 4 | Nested-element SPA | A composite that nests other plugins and wires them with props/events. | big-picture |
| 5 | Nested-SPA / app shell | Many SPAs nested into one deep-linkable app. | doxa-maps-spa |
The tier is decided by the files, not by how simple a folder looks: an
*.instances.jsonmakes a bundle cap-2 however light it is, and ameta.jsontypedeclares tiers 3/4/5. The authoritative, generated answer lives in documentation/reference-capability-exemplars.md — cite that file rather than remembering.
Capability 1 — single element
One folder, one .vue, one embeddable element. plugin-designs/all-people-groups/ shows every people
group on one map.
Capability 2 — prop-table element
One root.vue, many maps. plugin-designs/doxa-simple-map/ ships a preset prop-table
(simple-map.instances.json) that renders it three ways — each a standalone embeddable page from the
same code.
| Prayer | Engagement | Adoption |
|---|---|---|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Capability 3 — monolithic element
A whole multi-view map from one root.vue. The trade-off: you cannot embed just one of its tabs.
Capability 4 — nested-element SPA
A composite that nests lower-tier plugins and wires them with props and events. Each inner plugin
stays independently embeddable, and the composite is embeddable too. plugin-designs/my-upg-100-list/
ships three leaves:
Composite (upg-100-mfe) |
List (upg-100-list) |
Poster wall (poster-wall) |
|---|---|---|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Capability 5 — nested-SPA / app shell
Every plugin in one deep-linkable page. Two cap-5 apps ship, and the difference matters when you embed
one: doxa-maps-spa is what an end user gets; plugin-studio is what a developer works in.
doxa-maps-spa — the curated product SPA, with tabs grouped by audience.
plugin-studio — the developer studio, grouping every built plugin by capability (5 → 1). It is
auto-generated: the build discovers every folder in plugin-designs/, so a new plugin appears in the
studio without any wiring. This is section 3.
2. The 5 deployment methods
Ordered easiest to hardest. Status is stated honestly — "proven" means it has been run and seen, and nothing below is upgraded past what the files support.
| # | Method | Status | Command / install |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | iframe on any site | ✅ proven | bun run build, then paste the embed.iframe snippet from manifest.json |
| 2 | Mobile app (Capacitor, Android) | 🛠️ built, not shot | bun run check:mobile (no toolchain) · bun run phone needs Android SDK + JDK 17 + adb |
| 3 | JavaScript embed (<script src> + SRI) |
✅ proven | bun run build, then paste the embed.script + integrity snippet |
| 4 | WordPress plugin (shortcode + block) | 🛠️ built, contract-proven, not shot | bun run check:wp-embed, then install deployment/wordpress/doxa-maps-embed/ |
| 5 | Desktop app (Tauri) | 🛠️ built, not shot | bun run check:tauri (no toolchain) · cargo tauri build needs Rust + webview libs |
What "not shot" means: the code exists and its contract test passes, but nobody has captured it running on a real device or install. Each is blocked by a missing local toolchain, not by missing code — Android SDK for method 2, a live WordPress for method 4, and a GUI (this box is headless) for method 5.
Methods 1 and 3 are the two proven-live paths. If you need a map on a site today, use one of those.
The full per-method command matrix, with every prerequisite, is in documentation/README-SECTION-3-cli-commands.md.
The Mapbox token (read this before you file a bug)
The maps use Mapbox, which needs a pk. token. The token works differently in dev than in the built
tree, and diagnosing one from the other is the most common way to lose an hour.
| Where | How it gets a token |
|---|---|
Dev server (bun run dev) |
Baked into the page for you — from .env (VITE_MAPBOX_TOKEN) if present, otherwise from token in vite.doxa-maps-build-config.json. |
Built pages (bun run serve, or hosted) |
Not baked. Each page resolves a token at runtime: ?tk=<TOKEN> on the URL, a token you paste into the page's own input box (kept in localStorage), or a token endpoint (tokenUrl). |
So on a built leaf page you typically need:
http://localhost:4173/doxa-maps/demo-map/demo-map/index.html?tk=pk.your_token_here
To use your own token in dev, create a .env — it is gitignored (.gitignore lines 21-24), so it
never reaches the repo:
printf 'VITE_MAPBOX_TOKEN=%s\n' 'pk.your_token_here' > .env
If a basemap is an empty grey void while the pins still draw, that is the token failing — not a broken app.
Why this is genuinely awkward: the five deployment methods each handle the token differently, and a
JAMstack embed has nowhere safe to keep a secret. The answer is not to hide the token but to make hiding
it unnecessary: a public pk. token is restricted to specific URLs in the Mapbox dashboard. MapLibre
is being pursued to remove the per-embed token requirement entirely — that work is IN PROGRESS, not
done (maplibre-gl is a dependency and the page generator has a MapLibre path, but no plugin-design
runs on it yet).
3. The Plugin Studio
★ This is where you work — and the keyword is INTEROPERABILITY.
The Plugin Studio is one place to view all of your plugins at once and edit all of them in one place using your agent. Every plugin appears in a single view, sorted highest capability down to lowest, so you can see the whole catalogue instead of hunting through folders.
That sorting is the point. Once you can see every plugin side by side, you can tell your agent which ones to group together — any number of them — and compose them into higher-capability plugins using props, events and layouts. Group cap-1 and cap-2 elements and you get a cap-4 nested-element SPA; group those and you get a cap-5 app shell. That is what makes the studio the right place to build map plugins, rather than a gallery you merely look at.
Why this matters. Without a working studio, a developer sees the fruit but not the deeper strategy — they get the maps, but they cannot reproduce or extend them. The studio is what turns a set of finished maps into something you can build on.
Get it running
Four steps from nothing to every map in one place.
# 1. Clone (the repo root IS the studio — there is no subfolder to cd into).
# This host is PRIVATE: it will prompt for your Forgejo username + token.
git clone --branch doxa-maps-plugin-studio https://git.nuxtbase.app/doxa-life/doxa-maps.git
cd doxa-maps
# 2. Install dependencies (installs 206 packages; needs Node >= 18)
bun install --frozen-lockfile
# 3. Optional — your own Mapbox token for dev (see section 2)
printf 'VITE_MAPBOX_TOKEN=%s\n' 'pk.your_token_here' > .env
# 4. Open the Plugin Studio
bun run dev
Then open http://localhost:5173/ — that root URL is the Plugin Studio, with every plugin in one spot. (If port 5173 is busy Vite picks another one and prints it; read the line it logs.)
You do not need to build first. The build output in
public/is committed, so a fresh clone has plugins to show the moment the dev server starts.
If step 1 fails with
remote: Unauthorized, the clone is not broken —git.nuxtbase.appis a private self-hosted Forgejo and anonymous cloning is refused. Ask for an account, then use your username plus a Forgejo access token (not your password) when git prompts.
Two things worth knowing:
/is the studio;/__galleryis the old staging gallery, kept but demoted to an explicit URL.- Edits hot-reload. The studio mounts the real
plugin-studiocustom element through its ownindex.js— the same path the built bundle takes — so what you see is the real element, not a preview.
Work with your agent
The studio's companion is your coding agent. The loop:
- Open the studio (
bun run dev) and look at the catalogue, sorted cap-5 → cap-1. - Tell your agent which plugins to group — e.g. "combine the research map and the people-groups grid into one composite."
- The agent writes a new folder in
plugin-designs/<name>/, wiring the children with props, events and a layout fromlibrary/layouts/. - Refresh the studio. The new, higher-capability plugin is there.
The whole contract is: write your app inside plugin-designs/<your-map>/. There is no registration
step and no per-plugin wiring — the build discovers every folder under plugin-designs/. Copy
plugin-designs/template-bundle/ to start a new one.
Two shared layouts do the composing, both in library/layouts/:
VerticalTabsLayout— one element visible at a time, lazy-mounted on first open.StackLayout— the opposite: elements stacked top-to-bottom at natural height, so the page scrolls through them.
The production build
The dev server is for working. When you want the deployable tree:
bun run build # ~4 minutes; writes public/doxa-maps/
bun run serve # serve the BUILT tree at http://localhost:4173
bun run build takes a lock: if another build is already running it fails fast rather than
corrupting the shared output. Set BUILD_LOCK_WAIT=600 to queue behind it instead.
Repository layout
Two directories matter to a plugin author:
plugin-designs/ ← YOUR FREE ZONE. One folder per plugin. Copy template-bundle/ to start.
library/ ← the SHARED toolkit (layouts, components, composables, colors, stores, i18n).
Everything else is supporting cast: internal/ (build + gates), public/ (committed build output),
deployment/ (Capacitor, WordPress, Tauri), documentation/.
plugin-designs/ is a free zone. Your plugin is its own application in its own folder, building to
its own output. Nothing you do there can break another author's map.
library/ is a HIGH BAR. It is multi-tenant — reused by many maps and authors — so every edit is a
breaking-change risk to everyone. Only contribute here when a component is genuinely reusable and
parameterized, so other maps can use it. Never widen or casually add. Keep map-specific,
non-parameterized code in your own plugin-design.
More docs
| Read this | When |
|---|---|
| documentation/develop-a-plugin-and-see-it-live.md | ★ the golden path — zero to a plugin live, in 6 steps |
| documentation/README-SECTION-3-cli-commands.md | the full per-method CLI + install matrix |
| documentation/reference-capability-exemplars.md | which bundle is the capability-N example (generated) |
| documentation/reference-library-index.md | the menu of reusable library/ pieces you can import |
| documentation/why.md | 2 min — the problem, the idea, one diagram |
| documentation/tutorial.md | build your first map, step by step |
| documentation/how-to.md | task recipes (embed, data, mobile) |
| documentation/architecture/ | the deep end — embeddability, app-wrappers, file map |
Bottom line: maps should be open source, run everywhere, and multiply. This bundler makes each map a self-contained file that embeds on your site, your partners' sites, WordPress, and mobile — from one build. The Plugin Studio is where you compose them into something bigger.









