NORDR · · 4 min read
Why AEGIR Needs a Source Registry
Dive briefings need to know which provider informed each signal, how fresh it is, what region it covers, and whether it can be cached offline.
A dive briefing is only as trustworthy as its sources.
Visibility, current, tide, swell, wind, temperature, bathymetry, species context, and regulation context do not come from one universal provider. They come from different authorities, models, observations, and reference datasets.
AEGIR needs a source registry because those differences matter.
Region Comes First
The best source in one region may not be the best source in another.
Europe may lean on Copernicus Marine, EMODnet, MET Norway, ICES, WoRMS, and local regulators. The United States may lean more heavily on NOAA services. A global fallback can fill gaps, but it should not automatically outrank regional authorities.
The app should not hard-code one global truth.
It should know the region and signal family.
Licensing Is Part of Product Scope
Offline maps and cached briefings create legal questions.
Some sources allow offline use. Some restrict redistribution. Some require attribution. Some are fine for advisory interpretation but not for stored map regions.
A source registry preserves that information before it becomes a product problem.
Provenance Supports Confidence
If a visibility signal is derived from model context rather than a local observation, confidence should change.
If a regulation source has not been recently verified, the app should avoid overconfident legal language. If bathymetry is global fallback rather than local high-resolution data, the briefing should treat it as context, not precision.
The registry makes those distinctions available.
It Keeps the UI Stable
A source registry lets adapters change without rewriting screens.
The briefing can keep rendering visibility, current, tide, and structure signals while the backend changes which provider is primary in a given region. That is the right separation.
Users care about the briefing.
The app still needs to know the source.
Advisory Means Advisory
AEGIR is not a dive computer, legal authority, or navigation-grade chart.
The source registry helps preserve that boundary. It records claims class, caveats, freshness, and fallback rank so the product can stay useful without pretending certainty.
For dive planning, that honesty is the feature.
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