Foglight

Foglight is a zero-setup, local-first Windows dashboard for live public events. It brings severe weather, earthquakes, natural hazards, humanitarian updates, aviation and marine advisories, public signals, and live news into one fast desktop view.

The release is one portable Foglight.exe. No installer, account, cloud backend, or required API key. End users do not need Python, WSL, Docker, Git, Node, or a Linux distribution.

Download the latest Foglight.exe

Foglight is MIT licensed and free to use, modify, distribute, and build on.

Screenshots

Overview

Prioritized incidents, explainable scoring, source freshness, local watch tools, and a bundled offline world map.

Standard

The original high-density situation room: live map overlays, source rails, tickers, public-data panels, market context, and live news video.

Command

A tighter incident-first layout for wall displays and long-running monitoring.

What It Does

Foglight turns public feeds into three purpose-built views:

• Overview prioritizes current incidents with explainable evidence, category filters, source health, change tracking, local search, watch regions, and safe CSV/GeoJSON export.
• Standard provides the dense global map and live source rails for weather, earthquakes, hazards, humanitarian reports, public activity, markets, and news video.
• Command compresses Overview for wall displays and long-running monitoring.
• The bundled Natural Earth base map, cached history, settings, watch regions, and pins continue to work when external feeds are unavailable.
• Fourteen canonical public-data providers work without accounts or keys. NASA FIRMS remains an optional extra layer for users who already have a key.

Why It Exists

Foglight is for people who want a fast, local, no-account picture of what is happening across the planet without assembling APIs or running infrastructure. It works as a newsroom side monitor, severe-weather and hazard display, humanitarian-awareness screen, wall display, or always-on desktop dashboard.

Feature Matrix

Area	Included
Desktop release	Single Foglight.exe, native WebView2 window, no installer
Overview	Prioritized incidents, category filters, change summaries, source health, watch regions, search, export, and incident timelines
Command	Compact incident-first density for wall displays and continuous monitoring
Live map	Dark global map, quake markers, weather polygons, conflict hotspots, hazards, ISS, aviation advisories, and optional fires
Hazard monitoring	USGS earthquakes, volcanoes, NOAA cyclones, GDACS disasters, EONET natural events, NWS alerts, tsunami feeds, and NOAA SIGMETs
Current events and news	UN, DW, France 24, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, and configurable RSS feeds
Humanitarian	ReliefWeb situation reports and update stream
Markets	Bitcoin mempool/fees/blocks, crypto tickers, forex, and conditional commodity futures
Internet pulse	GitHub public events, SEC EDGAR filings, Wikipedia edits, Hacker News, Reddit
Live TV	Major YouTube live news embeds, default channel setting, external fallback link
Local tools	Watch regions, keyword migration, pins, local search, CSV/GeoJSON export, notification preferences, and custom RSS feeds
Privacy model	Local-only app state, loopback server, masked optional keys, no Foglight cloud account

Full details are in docs/FEATURES.md.

Quick Start

Download the latest verified release asset:

Download Foglight.exe

Release page:

github.com/aivrar/foglight/releases/latest

Run it:

Foglight.exe

That is the normal user path. Foglight starts a local server on 127.0.0.1, opens a native WebView window, and stores runtime state under:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Foglight\

Use the window close control or the in-app Shut down button to stop the local server and close the app. The release page includes SHA256SUMS.txt for artifact verification and records whether the build is publisher-signed.

Requirements

For users:

• Windows 10/11
• Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime
• Internet connection for live data feeds
• No admin rights expected
• No system Python required
• No WSL, Docker, Git, or Node required

WebView2 is normally present on modern Windows systems. If WebView startup fails, Foglight falls back to opening the local dashboard in the default browser.

Panels

Panel	Source	What It Shows
World Map	Bundled Leaflet and Natural Earth; optional OpenStreetMap tiles	Offline global base map and overlays
Earthquakes	USGS GeoJSON	Recent seismic activity
Severe Weather	NWS api.weather.gov	Active US alerts and polygons
Conflict Watch	UN, DW, France 24, defense RSS	Conflict-oriented stream
Major Hazards	NOAA NHC, GDACS, USGS, Smithsonian GVP, tsunami.gov	Cyclones, disasters, volcanoes, tsunami notices, major quakes
Humanitarian Sitreps	ReliefWeb RSS	Humanitarian updates
Bitcoin Pulse	mempool.space	Fees, mempool, blocks, difficulty
Markets	CoinPaprika and Frankfurter; conditional Yahoo compatibility	Crypto, forex, and optional commodity futures
News Ticker	Configured RSS feeds	Rolling headline strip
Wikipedia Edits	Wikimedia EventStreams	Recent public edits
GitHub Pulse	GitHub Events API	Public developer activity
SEC EDGAR	SEC Atom feed	Current filings
HN + Reddit	Firebase HN API, Reddit RSS	Internet trend panel
Live TV	YouTube live embeds	Live news video and external fallback

See docs/DATA_SOURCES.md and CREDITS.md for the full source and credit list.

Optional API Key

Foglight works without keys. One optional integration unlocks an additional map layer:

Key	Unlocks
NASA FIRMS	MODIS/VIIRS near-real-time fire detections

The key is stored locally under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Foglight\state\settings.json. The settings API masks its value before returning settings to the UI.

Project Structure

foglight/
|-- .github/              # Windows CI, signed-release workflow, templates
|-- assets/               # Windows icon and generated version metadata
|-- config/               # Versioned provider registry and bounded datasets
|-- docs/                 # Architecture, sources, screenshots, release evidence
|-- foglight_core/        # Models, providers, scheduler, storage, correlation
|-- scripts/              # Smoke tests, diagnostics, baselines, secret scan
|-- tests/                # Python, JavaScript, browser, visual, packaged tests
|-- web/                  # Overview, Standard, Command, maps, watches, settings
|-- build_windows.py
|-- foglight_native.py
|-- foglight_native.spec
|-- foglight_server.py
|-- index.html
|-- requirements-build.txt
|-- requirements-dev.txt
|-- pyproject.toml
`-- README.md

For a more detailed file map, see docs/FILE_TREE.md.

Architecture And Audit Record

The researched architecture and gated execution tasklist for the incident-based Overview, timeline, offline map, and additional keyless providers are kept in:

• V2 planning research
• V2 phased execution plan

These documents are the research, phased implementation, and independent audit record for the features present in this source tree. Current release evidence is summarized in docs/RELEASE_EVIDENCE.md.

Build From Source

End users can download Foglight.exe from Releases and run it without Python. The steps below are for rebuilding the executable from source.

Developer build requirements:

• Windows
• Python 3.13+
• Dependencies in requirements-build.txt

Build:

python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -r requirements-build.txt
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe .\build_windows.py

Output:

dist\Foglight.exe

The executable is a release artifact and should be attached to GitHub Releases, not committed to the repository.

Detailed build notes live in docs/BUILD_WINDOWS.md.

Local Development

Run the server directly:

$env:FOGLIGHT_APP_DIR = (Get-Location).Path
$env:FOGLIGHT_CACHE_DIR = "$env:TEMP\foglight-cache"
$env:FOGLIGHT_STATE_DIR = "$env:TEMP\foglight-state"
$env:FOGLIGHT_LOG_DIR = "$env:TEMP\foglight-logs"
python .\foglight_server.py 9787

Then open:

http://127.0.0.1:9787/

Headless packaged smoke test:

$env:FOGLIGHT_NO_BROWSER = "1"
$env:FOGLIGHT_PORT = "19877"
.\dist\Foglight.exe

Security And Privacy

• Native launcher binds the server to 127.0.0.1.
• State-changing endpoints require an ephemeral per-launch token.
• Host validation blocks DNS-rebinding origins.
• RSS proxy rejects localhost/private-network targets and revalidates redirects.
• API keys are stored only in the local Foglight state directory.
• /api/settings returns key status only, not full stored key values.
• Cache filenames are hashed and key-bearing URLs are redacted from logs/errors.
• Browser responses use a restrictive Content Security Policy; the reviewed Leaflet runtime is bundled locally.
• No Foglight account or hosted backend is used.

See SECURITY.md for the disclosure and local-risk notes.

Release Flow

1. Capture final screenshots and place them under docs/screenshots/.

2. Run source checks:

   .\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m ruff check .
   .\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pytest -q
   node --check .\web\app.js
   npm run test:js
   npm run test:browser
   .\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip_audit -r .\requirements-build.txt

3. Build the exe:

   .\.venv\Scripts\python.exe .\build_windows.py

4. Run both packaged release smoke scripts from the release checklist.

5. Record whether the artifact is signed or unsigned. Publishers with a trusted code-signing identity may use --require-signature; users never need one.

6. Create a GitHub Release and upload dist\Foglight.exe plus dist\SHA256SUMS.txt.

Full checklist: docs/RELEASE_CHECKLIST.md.

Credits

Foglight stands on public data providers, open-source libraries, and platform tools. Credits are tracked in CREDITS.md, including Leaflet, Natural Earth, OpenStreetMap, PyInstaller, pywebview, Microsoft Edge WebView2, pythonnet, Pillow, and the public data providers used by the dashboard.

License

MIT License - free for everyone. See LICENSE. Third-party services, libraries, map tiles, and data feeds remain governed by their own licenses and terms.