Otherlight

Otherlight is a local learning and modelling workspace for exoplanet, exomoon, and detached-binary scenarios. The Browser is the primary product. It provides interactive Education simulations, Guided Labs, plots, exports, and .otherlight workspaces. An optional local science service executes a bounded radial-velocity V5 request when its dependencies are available.

The hosted Browser runs the Education simulation, Guided Labs, plots, exports, and workspace handling in the browser. GitHub Pages cannot run the Apple application or Python science service, so the hosted Scientific profile explains how to use that capability locally and never attempts a scientific request.

Products and shared contracts

Area	Responsibility
apps/browser/	Browser Education and Scientific-profile interface
apps/apple/	SwiftUI Education app for Apple platforms
apps/demo/	Static product tour
services/science/	Optional loopback V5 radial-velocity service
contracts/	Versioned Education V4, science V5, workspace-v1, and capability contracts

The Browser is a modular monolith, not a collection of JavaScript packages. Its layers and the science flow are described in docs/architecture.md.

Quick start

Requires Node 22.13 or later and pnpm 11.4.

corepack enable
corepack install
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm dev

Open the Vite URL shown in the terminal. Education does not require a network service.

Build and preview the Browser bundle:

pnpm build
pnpm preview

Build and preview the GitHub Pages variant at /otherlight/:

pnpm build:pages
pnpm preview:pages

The Pages variant uses the repository base path and disables loopback science actions. Ordinary development and production builds retain the local science boundary. See docs/RUNBOOK.md for the local Pages smoke test and later activation steps.

Local science service

The service accepts strict V5 Newtonian barycentric requests and returns radial-velocity artifacts. It binds to 127.0.0.1:8765; it is neither a remote service nor a fallback for Education results.

python3.14 -m venv services/science/.venv
source services/science/.venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -e './services/science[dev]'
pnpm science:backend:serve

See services/science/README.md for routes, limits, dependencies, and failure behaviour.

Verification

pnpm hygiene:public
pnpm hygiene:docs
pnpm hygiene:swift-docs
pnpm architecture:check
pnpm physics-registry
pnpm ci:verify

Targeted checks:

pnpm science:backend:check
pnpm science:backend:test
pnpm native:core:test
pnpm native:science:test

pnpm ci:verify covers public-surface and documentation hygiene, the Browser architecture check, physics registry validation, linting, typechecking, tests, and the production Browser build. Run service or Apple checks separately when their code or contracts change.

Documentation

• Architecture
• Operations
• Browser guide
• Validation boundaries
• Physics model status
• Release status

License and security

Otherlight is licensed under MIT. Report vulnerabilities through the process in SECURITY.md. Third-party attributions are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.