cloud

The Automaton behind The Earth App

A sophisticated Cloudflare Workers-based microservice that powers The Earth App's AI-driven content generation, recommendations, events, realtime notifications, and user progression systems. Built with Hono.js, this service orchestrates multiple AI models, manages distributed caching, and exposes a comprehensive REST + WebSocket API for activity discovery, article curation, quest tracking, image submissions, and personalized recommendations.

Architecture Overview

The Cloud service is a serverless application running on Cloudflare Workers with three primary runtime surfaces: REST APIs, WebSocket notification channels, and scheduled automation.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         Hono.js Edge Router                         │
│  ┌────────────────┐  ┌────────────────┐  ┌──────────────────────┐   │
│  │ Middleware     │  │ API /v1        │  │ API /ws              │   │
│  │ - Security     │  │ - Activities   │  │ - Ticket issuance    │   │
│  │ - CORS         │  │ - Articles     │  │ - Live notifications │   │
│  │ - Logger       │  │ - Events       │  │ - Admin push         │   │
│  │ - HTTP cache   │  │ - Quests       │  │                      │   │
│  └────────────────┘  │ - Badges/Points│  └──────────────────────┘   │
│                      │ - Journeys     │                             │
│                      └────────────────┘                             │
│                    Scheduled Worker (cron triggers)                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
               │                 │                 │
               ▼                 ▼                 ▼
     ┌────────────────┐  ┌───────────────┐  ┌────────────────────┐
     │ Cloudflare AI  │  │ KV + Cache KV │  │ R2 + Images Binding│
     └────────────────┘  └───────────────┘  └────────────────────┘
                         ┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
                         │ Durable Objects                          │
                         │ - LiveNotifier (WebSocket fan-out)       │
                         │ - UserTimer (user timer actions)         │
                         └──────────────────────────────────────────┘

Request Flow

Incoming request -> middleware stack (headers, CORS, logging, cache)
Authentication ->
- /v1/*: Authorization: Bearer {ADMIN_API_KEY}
- /ws/notify: admin key
- /ws/users/:id/ticket: user session token validation with Mantle
Cache lookup -> deterministic key checks in CACHE namespace
Business logic -> AI invocation, ranking, validation, KV/R2 reads+writes
Response -> JSON or binary response with custom headers

Technology Stack

Core Dependencies

hono (^4.12.10): edge-optimized HTTP framework and middleware routing.
@earth-app/ocean (^1.0.4): Kotlin/WASM library for article/event search and activity recommendations.
@earth-app/moho (^1.0.1): calendar/event data source used for scheduled event generation.
pako (^2.1.0): compression support (nodejs_zlib).
exifreader (^4.37.0): EXIF parsing for event image metadata workflows.
music-metadata (^11.12.3): audio metadata utilities for media processing.
@cloudflare/workerd-darwin-arm64 (^1.20260405.1): local runtime binary support while developing on Apple Silicon.

Type Strategy

Runtime/Worker types are generated with Wrangler into src/worker-configuration.d.ts.
@cloudflare/workers-types has been removed from dependencies and tsconfig.json.

Development Tools

Wrangler (^4.80.0): local dev, deploy, and type generation
Vitest (^4.1.2) + @cloudflare/vitest-pool-workers (^0.14.1): worker-native tests
Prettier (^3.8.1): formatting with Husky + lint-staged
Bun: package/runtime tooling

Infrastructure & Bindings

The service integrates with Cloudflare services via Worker bindings:

type Bindings = {
	R2: R2Bucket;
	AI: Ai;
	KV: KVNamespace;
	CACHE: KVNamespace;
	ASSETS: Fetcher;
	IMAGES: ImagesBinding;
	NOTIFIER: DurableObjectNamespace;
	TIMER: DurableObjectNamespace;

	ADMIN_API_KEY: string;
	NCBI_API_KEY: string;
	MANTLE_URL: string;
	MAPS_API_KEY: string;
	ENCRYPTION_KEY: string;
};

Cloudflare KV Namespaces

CACHE (c4a1aaf2a5fc4be98b91df2d0fc0faab): ephemeral cache (12-hour default TTL)
- Activity metadata and synonyms
- Article/event recommendation results
- Scoring results
- Leaderboards and profile photo responses
KV (322faefd5628471cb7cea08cf041804a): persistent and semi-persistent app state
- Journey streaks and activity completion logs
- Badge progress + grant metadata
- Impact points history
- Quest progress/history metadata
- Event submission indices and score metadata

R2 Bucket

Bucket: earth-app (prod)
Primary objects:
- users/{id}/profile.png and resized variants
- events/{eventId}/thumbnail.webp
- events/{eventId}/submissions/{userId}_{submissionId}.webp (encrypted)
- users/{id}/quests/{questId}/... binary quest evidence (compressed + encrypted)

Durable Objects

LiveNotifier (NOTIFIER):
- Issues one-time WebSocket tickets
- Enforces one-time ticket consumption with transactional storage
- Fans out pushed notifications to connected sockets
UserTimer (TIMER):
- Tracks per-user timer actions (start/stop)
- Applies duration-based progress updates (e.g., reading-time trackers)

External Services

NCBI PubMed APIs (article search)
Iconify API (activity icon resolution)
Dictionary API (activity synonyms)
Google Places + Geocoding APIs (event thumbnail lookup/reverse geocode)
Mantle backend API (MANTLE_URL) for persistence integration

Core Features

1. Dynamic Activity Generation

GET /v1/activity/:id generates and caches activity metadata:

AI-generated 200+ character descriptions with retry + validation
Activity type classification
Synonym enrichment
Icon lookup from preferred icon sets

2. Scientific Article Curation + Quiz Generation

Automated article pipeline:

Generate a topic
Search source articles via Ocean scrapers
Rank with semantic reranker
Build polished title + summary
Generate 2-5 quiz questions
Publish to Mantle and cache quiz payload

Scheduled article creation now generates two pieces per run (best-ranked and worst-ranked) to improve diversity.

3. Multi-Domain Recommendations

Articles: POST /v1/users/recommend_articles
Similar Articles: POST /v1/articles/recommend_similar_articles
Activities: POST /v1/users/recommend_activities
Events: POST /v1/users/recommend_events
Similar Events: POST /v1/events/recommend_similar_events

All recommendation paths use AI ranking with deterministic cache keys and fallback behavior.

4. User Journeys + Leaderboards

Tracks streaks for article, prompt, and event journeys with:

24-hour increment cooldown
2-day rolling TTL renewal
Cached top leaderboard snapshots
Rank lookup endpoint
Separate permanent activity completion logs

5. Badges, Impact Points, and Timers

User progression includes:

Rule-based badge tracking and granting
Manual admin operations (grant/revoke/reset)
Impact point accounting with history
Timer-driven tracker updates through Durable Object actions

6. Quest Engine (Multimodal)

Quest steps support image, audio, article quiz, and structured interactions:

Binary quest artifacts are compressed + encrypted before R2 storage
Per-step delay windows and alternate step handling
Completed quest archiving + retrieval
Quest progress enrichment with generated data URLs for retrieval APIs

7. Event Creation + Thumbnail Automation

Every 2 days, the worker generates events from Moho calendar data.

Birthday-style events are parsed for location extraction
Place photos are discovered with Google Places APIs
Thumbnails are converted to WebP, stored in R2, and exposed via metadata-rich endpoints
Event creation continues even when thumbnail generation fails (best-effort resilience)

8. Event Image Submissions + Scoring

Users can submit event images (data URL payloads), then retrieve scored results:

Image normalization/transforms via Images binding
Encrypted object storage in R2
Score + caption generation via AI rubric
Query endpoints for submission lookup, pagination, filtering, and deletion

9. Realtime WebSocket Notifications

WebSocket flow under /ws:

Client requests a one-time ticket (/ws/users/:id/ticket)
Ticket is validated and consumed on connect (/ws/users/:id/notifications?ticket=...)
Backend/admin sends payloads through /ws/notify

Security details include no-store headers, masked ticket logging, and strict one-time semantics.

10. AI-Generated Profile Photos

PUT /v1/users/profile_photo/:id generates a profile image and asynchronously creates size variants (32, 128, original) with Images binding + R2 persistence.

API Reference

Auth Model

All /v1/* endpoints require Authorization: Bearer {ADMIN_API_KEY}.
/ws/notify also requires admin bearer auth.
WebSocket user channels use session-validated one-time tickets (not admin keys).

Root

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/`	Health check (`Woosh!`)

Admin

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	`/v1/admin/migrate-legacy-keys`	Migrates legacy KV key formats

Activities

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/activity/:id`	Generate/retrieve activity metadata
GET	`/v1/synonyms?word={word}`	Retrieve synonyms for naming/aliasing

Articles

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/articles/search?q={query}`	Search article sources
POST	`/v1/articles/recommend_similar_articles`	Similar article recommendations
POST	`/v1/articles/grade`	AI rubric score for article text
POST	`/v1/articles/quiz/create`	Generate and persist article quiz
GET	`/v1/articles/quiz?articleId={id}`	Fetch article quiz
POST	`/v1/articles/quiz/submit`	Submit user quiz answers
GET	`/v1/articles/quiz/score?userId={id}&articleId={id}`	Fetch saved quiz score

Prompts

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	`/v1/prompts/grade`	AI rubric score for prompt text

User Recommendations + Profiles

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	`/v1/users/recommend_activities`	Activity recommendations
POST	`/v1/users/recommend_articles`	Article recommendations by activities
POST	`/v1/users/recommend_events`	Event recommendations by activities
GET	`/v1/users/profile_photo/:id?size={32\|128\|1024}`	Retrieve profile photo variant
PUT	`/v1/users/profile_photo/:id`	Generate/replace profile photo
POST	`/v1/users/timer`	Timer Durable Object actions

Journeys

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/users/journey/:type/:id`	Get journey streak + rank
POST	`/v1/users/journey/:type/:id/increment`	Increment streak with cooldown logic
DELETE	`/v1/users/journey/:type/:id/delete`	Reset streak
GET	`/v1/users/journey/:type/leaderboard?limit={n}`	Get top leaderboard
GET	`/v1/users/journey/:type/:id/rank`	Get user rank
GET	`/v1/users/journey/activity/:id/count`	Count completed activities
POST	`/v1/users/journey/activity/:id?activity={name}`	Add completed activity

Badges

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/users/badges`	List badge catalog
GET	`/v1/users/badges/:id`	List user's badge states
GET	`/v1/users/badges/:id/:badge_id`	Get single badge state
POST	`/v1/users/badges/:id/track`	Track badge progress by tracker ID
POST	`/v1/users/badges/:id/:badge_id/progress`	Add progress for badge tracker
POST	`/v1/users/badges/:id/:badge_id/grant`	Manually grant one-time badge
DELETE	`/v1/users/badges/:id/:badge_id/revoke`	Revoke granted badge
DELETE	`/v1/users/badges/:id/:badge_id/reset`	Reset badge progress

Impact Points

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/users/impact_points/:id`	Get points + history
POST	`/v1/users/impact_points/:id/add`	Add points
POST	`/v1/users/impact_points/:id/remove`	Remove points
PUT	`/v1/users/impact_points/:id/set`	Set absolute points

Quests

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/users/quests`	List quest definitions
GET	`/v1/users/quests/:id`	Get quest definition
POST	`/v1/users/quests/progress/:user_id`	Start quest
PATCH	`/v1/users/quests/progress/:user_id`	Submit step response
GET	`/v1/users/quests/progress/:user_id`	Get active progress
GET	`/v1/users/quests/progress/:user_id/step/:step_index`	Get specific step progress
DELETE	`/v1/users/quests/progress/:user_id`	Reset active progress
GET	`/v1/users/quests/history/:user_id`	List completed quests
GET	`/v1/users/quests/history/:user_id/:quest_id`	Get completed quest payload

Events + Event Media

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	`/v1/events/thumbnail/:id`	Get event thumbnail image
GET	`/v1/events/thumbnail/:id/metadata`	Get thumbnail author + size metadata
POST	`/v1/events/thumbnail/:id`	Upload custom thumbnail
POST	`/v1/events/thumbnail/:id/generate?name={event_name}`	Generate location-based thumbnail
DELETE	`/v1/events/thumbnail/:id`	Delete event thumbnail
POST	`/v1/events/recommend_similar_events`	Similar event recommendations
POST	`/v1/events/submit_image`	Submit event image
GET	`/v1/events/retrieve_image?...`	Retrieve image submission(s) with optional filters
DELETE	`/v1/events/delete_image?...`	Delete one or many image submissions

WebSocket Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	`/ws/notify`	Admin push payload to a channel
GET	`/ws/users/:id/ticket`	Issue one-time WebSocket ticket (session validated)
GET	`/ws/users/:id/notifications?ticket={uuid}`	Upgrade to user notification WebSocket

AI Models & Prompting

Model Selection Strategy

Use Case	Model	Rationale
Activity descriptions	`@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct`	Rich descriptive generation
Activity tags	`@cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct-fp8`	Fast structured tagging
Article topic generation	`@cf/meta/llama-3.2-3b-instruct`	Lightweight topic selection
Semantic ranking (articles/events)	`@cf/baai/bge-reranker-base`	Strong reranking quality
Article title + summary	`@cf/mistralai/mistral-small-3.1-24b-instruct`	Long-form summarization quality
Article quiz generation	`@cf/meta/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct`	Reliable structured question output
Prompt generation	`@cf/openai/gpt-oss-120b`	Higher-order prompt reasoning
Profile photo generation	`@cf/bytedance/stable-diffusion-xl-lightning`	Fast image synthesis
Text embeddings for scoring	`@cf/baai/bge-m3`	Semantic similarity scoring
Image captioning for scoring	`@cf/llava-hf/llava-1.5-7b-hf`	Visual-to-text interpretation
Image classification	`@cf/microsoft/resnet-50`	Label confidence checks
Object detection	`@cf/facebook/detr-resnet-50`	Object-level validation
Audio transcription	`@cf/openai/whisper-large-v3-turbo`	Quest audio validation

Output Sanitization

src/util/ai.ts includes a centralized sanitation/validation pipeline:

Remove markdown artifacts and wrappers
Remove common AI prefixes and formatting noise
Normalize whitespace and punctuation
Apply content-type-specific cleanup (description, title, topic, tags, question)
Enforce strict validators per domain object

Caching Strategy

Multi-Tier Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HTTP Cache Middleware               │
│ Scope: /v1/*                        │
│ Cache-Control: public, max-age=60   │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
              │
              ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ KV Cache (CACHE namespace)          │
│ Default TTL: 12h                    │
│ Includes Uint8Array custom serializer│
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
              │
              ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Source of Truth                      │
│ AI + External APIs + KV/R2           │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘

Key Patterns

// Activities and synonyms
`cache:activity_data:${id}``cache:synonyms:${word.toLowerCase()}`
// Recommendations
`cache:recommended_articles:${activitiesHash}:${poolHash}:${limit}``cache:similar_articles:${articleId}:${poolHash}:${limit}``cache:recommended_events:${activitiesHash}:${poolHash}:${limit}``cache:similar_events:${eventId}:${poolHash}:${limit}`
// Scoring and profile
`cache:article_score:${id}``cache:prompt_score:${id}``user:profile_photo:${id}:${size}`
// Journey + leaderboard
`journey:${type}:${id}``journey:activities:${id}``leaderboard:${type}`;

TTL Notes

Default cache TTL: 12 hours
Leaderboard cache TTL: 4 hours
Article score cache: 14 days
Prompt score cache: 2 days
Article quiz cache: about 14 days
Journey streak keys in KV: 2-day TTL, renewed by activity
/ws/* routes explicitly use no-store semantics

Serialization Edge Cases

Custom reviver/replacer handles binary payloads:

JSON.stringify(value, (_, val) =>
	val instanceof Uint8Array ? { __type: 'Uint8Array', data: Array.from(val) } : val
);

JSON.parse(result, (_, val) => (val?.__type === 'Uint8Array' ? new Uint8Array(val.data) : val));

Scheduled Tasks

Configured in wrangler.jsonc:

"triggers": {
  "crons": [
    "0 * * * *",      // Hourly: cache journey leaderboards
    "*/12 * * * *",   // Every 12 minutes: create prompt
    "*/24 * * * *",   // Every 24 minutes: create best+worst ranked articles
    "0 0 */2 * *"     // Every 2 days: create events from calendar data
  ]
}

Hourly: Leaderboard Cache

Refreshes top rankings for article, prompt, and event journeys.

Every 12 Minutes: Prompt Generation

Generate one validated question prompt
Publish to Mantle (/v2/prompts)

Every 24 Minutes: Article Pair Generation

Generate topic and tags
Search + rank source articles
Create and post two article variants (best-ranked and worst-ranked)
Generate and attach quizzes

Every 2 Days: Event Generation

Load upcoming events from Moho data
Create event payloads and post to Mantle
Attempt birthday-location thumbnail generation when applicable
Continue processing even when individual event creation fails

Development

Prerequisites

Bun (>= 1.0.0)
Wrangler (installed via project dependencies)
Cloudflare account with Workers, KV, R2, AI, Images, and Durable Objects enabled

Local Development

# Install dependencies
bun install

# Start local dev server (port 9898, scheduled testing enabled)
bun run dev

# Test endpoint
curl http://localhost:9898/v1/activity/hiking \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_DEV_API_KEY"

Testing

# Run worker tests
bunx vitest

Regenerate Worker Types

# Regenerate runtime types used by TypeScript
bunx wrangler types

Debugging AI Calls

console.log('AI Request:', { model, messages });
const response = await ai.run(model, params);
console.log('AI Response:', response);

Common issues:

Empty response: model availability or payload mismatch
Validation failure: inspect raw output before sanitation
Timeout: reduce context size or choose a lighter model

Deployment

Production Deployment

# Deploy to Cloudflare Workers
bun run deploy

Deployment flow:

Build/minify worker bundle
Upload worker + bindings config
Apply route + cron configuration from wrangler.jsonc
Activate on cloud.earth-app.com

License

All Earth App components are available open-source. This repository is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

Contributors

Maintained by the Earth App development team.

For questions or support, contact: support@earth-app.com

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package.json		package.json
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cloud

Table of Contents

Architecture Overview

Request Flow

Technology Stack

Core Dependencies

Type Strategy

Development Tools

Infrastructure & Bindings

Cloudflare KV Namespaces

R2 Bucket

Durable Objects

External Services

Core Features

1. Dynamic Activity Generation

2. Scientific Article Curation + Quiz Generation

3. Multi-Domain Recommendations

4. User Journeys + Leaderboards

5. Badges, Impact Points, and Timers

6. Quest Engine (Multimodal)

7. Event Creation + Thumbnail Automation

8. Event Image Submissions + Scoring

9. Realtime WebSocket Notifications

10. AI-Generated Profile Photos

API Reference

Auth Model

Root

Admin

Activities

Articles

Prompts

User Recommendations + Profiles

Journeys

Badges

Impact Points

Quests

Events + Event Media

WebSocket Routes

AI Models & Prompting

Model Selection Strategy

Output Sanitization

Caching Strategy

Multi-Tier Architecture

Key Patterns

TTL Notes

Serialization Edge Cases

Scheduled Tasks

Hourly: Leaderboard Cache

Every 12 Minutes: Prompt Generation

Every 24 Minutes: Article Pair Generation

Every 2 Days: Event Generation

Development

Prerequisites

Local Development

Testing

Regenerate Worker Types

Debugging AI Calls

Deployment

Production Deployment

License

Contributors

About

Topics

Resources

License

Code of conduct

Security policy

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Watchers

Forks

Releases

Sponsor this project

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