Start Here — setup, support, and what this is

[measurethepixels]

Welcome. This repo is NOVA — the autonomous astrophotography engine from the Measure the Pixels channel (Building an AI Astrophotographer).

How to set it up (read this first)

There is no installer, on purpose. Every deployment is a port to your OS, storage, and toolset. The supported path:

1. Clone the repo.
2. Open it with an AI coding agent — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, or similar.
3. Say: "Read REPLICATE.md and set this pipeline up for my system."

REPLICATE.md is a porting contract written for the agent: environment discovery, a capability matrix (the free core is Siril + ASTAP + GraXpert + Seti Astro Suite Pro), what it may adapt vs must not touch, and a verification protocol so the port is proven with measurements, not assumed.

Before you ask a question

• Setup problems → have your agent re-run the REPLICATE.md verification protocol.
• "Why is this threshold like that?" → WORKFLOW_CHANGELOG.md — every version documents the measurement that drove it.
• How a step works → the channel episodes walk each decision with the real numbers.

Support boundary

Shared as-is alongside the channel. Issues and PRs welcome; responses not guaranteed — hobby project, fixed time budget. Issues get attention on production-week Fridays.

Measure the pixels. Make the call.