iNaturalist Sightings Tool – Fetch, Clump, and Display Observations
Use the provided inaturalist‑clumper CLI and Git‑scraping repo to build a web app that displays observations with thumbnails.
Clone the repo and run the inat‑sightings.html example to view your observations.
Summary
A new toolchain was built to fetch iNaturalist observations from two separate accounts, group them by time, and display them in a web app. The workflow starts with the inaturalist‑clumper CLI, which pulls observations and groups them into clumps based on a 2‑hour, 5 km proximity threshold. The clumps are then stored in a Git‑scraping repository, inaturalist‑clumps, and the resulting clumps.json is hosted on GitHub, making it CORS‑friendly. A custom inat‑sightings.html page fetches this JSON, renders thumbnails using the small.jpg URLs, and opens a modal with the large.jpg image and common species names when a thumbnail is clicked. The entire stack was built using Claude Code for web, demonstrating a rapid end‑to‑end solution.
Key changes
- Built inaturalist‑clumper CLI for fetching observations
- Clumps default to 2‑hour, 5 km proximity
- Created Git‑scraping repo inaturalist‑clumps
- Hosted clumps.json on GitHub for CORS access
- Developed inat‑sightings.html app that fetches JSON and displays thumbnails
- Modal shows large image with species names