Started as my MA thesis in 2022, kept building since, mostly solo with a little funding. Fully open source, self-hosted, AGPL-3.0, Next.js + Deck.gl on the frontend, Strapi backend, Python ETL pulling from museum open-access APIs. Currently indexing over 100k artifacts from all over the world, across 8 collections (Met, V&A, SMB Berlin). Recently added an md export so researchers can download provenance data for a filtered set of artifacts.
The infrastructure is conceptualized as an indexer, not a hoster. Even images are kept as URLs pointing to the source institutions. It's connective tissue between archives that were never designed to speak to each other, with an origin-first search UI concept. The data model is on purpose flat, to avoid encoding problematic taxonomies, and routes researchers directly to the source giving responsibility to the source institutions rather than duplicating institutional data. It indexes the relationship between origin sites and destination collections.
Coming from a design background, taking this project from prototype to production app has been incredibly rewarding, but honestly it\u2019s getting a little bit overwhelming to scale alone. I would love community\u2019s feedback on performance scaling, any code contributions, data pipelines for missing museum apis or general feedback.
Repo: https://github.com/hburakyel/ex-situ
Live: https://exsitu.app"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Ex Situ \u2013 Open-source spatial index of displaced cultural artifacts"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://exsitu.app/map"}},"_tags":["story","author_hbyel","story_48988158","show_hn"],"author":"hbyel","children":[48988677,48988753,48988960,48988995,48989035,48989268,48989317,48989522,48989530,48989919,48990114,48991281,48992302,48992673,48992779,48995536,48995708,48996086],"created_at":"2026-07-21T04:48:32Z","created_at_i":1784609312,"num_comments":41,"objectID":"48988158","points":51,"story_id":48988158,"story_text":"Hi, I designed and developed a spatial index that maps museum artefacts as connecting arcs/hyperlinks from their origin site to institutional location/sources. The Index specifically looks at western/euro-american institutions and maps their collection categorised by them under Islamic art, Asian/African art, ethnological collections, Middle East, South America etc.
Started as my MA thesis in 2022, kept building since, mostly solo with a little funding. Fully open source, self-hosted, AGPL-3.0, Next.js + Deck.gl on the frontend, Strapi backend, Python ETL pulling from museum open-access APIs. Currently indexing over 100k artifacts from all over the world, across 8 collections (Met, V&A, SMB Berlin). Recently added an md export so researchers can download provenance data for a filtered set of artifacts.
The infrastructure is conceptualized as an indexer, not a hoster. Even images are kept as URLs pointing to the source institutions. It's connective tissue between archives that were never designed to speak to each other, with an origin-first search UI concept. The data model is on purpose flat, to avoid encoding problematic taxonomies, and routes researchers directly to the source giving responsibility to the source institutions rather than duplicating institutional data. It indexes the relationship between origin sites and destination collections.
Coming from a design background, taking this project from prototype to production app has been incredibly rewarding, but honestly it\u2019s getting a little bit overwhelming to scale alone. I would love community\u2019s feedback on performance scaling, any code contributions, data pipelines for missing museum apis or general feedback.
Repo: https://github.com/hburakyel/ex-situ
Live: https://exsitu.app","title":"Show HN: Ex Situ \u2013 Open-source spatial index of displaced cultural artifacts","updated_at":"2026-07-24T10:59:51Z","url":"https://exsitu.app/map"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"nullifytheprese"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["arc","institute"],"value":"Nowadays, especially among the more intelligent of us, a tendency to procrastinate has become increasingly common. A tendency with a specific shape and form, something different than \u201cI just end up doing different things than what I\u2019m expected\u201d, \u201cI can\u2019t bring myself to do it\u201d and such\u2026. We are talking about deliberate avoidance to engage with a certain problem, on grounds that the information at our disposal is insufficient to decide which way we should go or at least that\u2019s what the representers of that specific type of procrastinators I intend to talk about say in their defence.
Okay, let\u2019s play into it, they lack information, fine. I\u2019ll proceed by asking: \u201cWhat kind of information exactly do you lack?\u201d They can\u2019t say that the lack of sheer volume is the problem, I\u2019ll just respond with: \u201cLook at all the LLMs available to wide public, advanced like never before, you are telling me that your case is so peculiar that they can\u2019t give you answers?\u201d
Then where it is? Let\u2019s consider predictions, everyone wants to know what will happen with whatever they took on now and this seems to be the major concern of those who are normally hesitant to initiate new stuff\u2026. But have you actually considered how complex a prediction-making process is\u2026. It\u2019ll be easier for you to grasp how multifaceted it truly is when you not only pronounce it, but actually let it sit for a while\u2026.. You are not the sole variable in the equation. Let me repeat it once again. You are not the sole variable in the equation. Think about how difficult is to assess yourself, your thoughts and feelings for a singular situation, just one. Think about how nothing is truly disconnected. How everything forms an interesting causal chain. That time when you yelled at somebody you are usually affectionate towards and the other time when you were affectionate to someone you are usually not. How many biological, neurological and environmental factors were at play there. What made you react differently than usual?
You are probably asking yourself \u201cBrother, what the hell are you talking about and how does this connect to procrastination?\u201d Without further ado, I am answering this straightforwardly. You are clearly not lacking informational volume, we have that in abundance. You are demanding guarantee that your efforts will be rewarded accordingly. But do you still think that\u2019s possible in the light of what I already said? I doubt it. Not only that immediate engagement is necessary for the reward you cherish so much, but immediate engagement provides structurally indispensable information, because the experience is constituted by constant transformation of eventual to actual. You enter everything with a preconceived idea of how it will go, only when you step in you get to know if you are actually correct. That should be the ideal of everyone who demands certainty, and if you refuse to do it, because you \u201chave enough of a certainty to know how things would go\u201d, then don\u2019t pretend you demand certainty, you only demanded reason to preemptively quit, because every prediction is based on a methodology, and the predictive power is relative to what the model quantifies over\u2026.
I hope that albeit my obscure and at moments disconnected writing style, you understood what needs to be understood, that the information you are looking for is idiosyncratic to experience and that predictive models cannot possibly quantify over everything that has to be taken into account, and that the \u201c90% fail\u201d your prediction machinery outputs might be less trustworthy than it\u2019s comfortable to admit."},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["arc"],"value":"Why the Information You Are Waiting for May Not Exist Yet?"}},"_tags":["story","author_nullifytheprese","story_49501905","ask_hn"],"author":"nullifytheprese","created_at":"2026-08-30T19:21:57Z","created_at_i":1788117717,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"49501905","points":1,"story_id":49501905,"story_text":"Nowadays, especially among the more intelligent of us, a tendency to procrastinate has become increasingly common. A tendency with a specific shape and form, something different than \u201cI just end up doing different things than what I\u2019m expected\u201d, \u201cI can\u2019t bring myself to do it\u201d and such\u2026. We are talking about deliberate avoidance to engage with a certain problem, on grounds that the information at our disposal is insufficient to decide which way we should go or at least that\u2019s what the representers of that specific type of procrastinators I intend to talk about say in their defence.
Okay, let\u2019s play into it, they lack information, fine. I\u2019ll proceed by asking: \u201cWhat kind of information exactly do you lack?\u201d They can\u2019t say that the lack of sheer volume is the problem, I\u2019ll just respond with: \u201cLook at all the LLMs available to wide public, advanced like never before, you are telling me that your case is so peculiar that they can\u2019t give you answers?\u201d
Then where it is? Let\u2019s consider predictions, everyone wants to know what will happen with whatever they took on now and this seems to be the major concern of those who are normally hesitant to initiate new stuff\u2026. But have you actually considered how complex a prediction-making process is\u2026. It\u2019ll be easier for you to grasp how multifaceted it truly is when you not only pronounce it, but actually let it sit for a while\u2026.. You are not the sole variable in the equation. Let me repeat it once again. You are not the sole variable in the equation. Think about how difficult is to assess yourself, your thoughts and feelings for a singular situation, just one. Think about how nothing is truly disconnected. How everything forms an interesting causal chain. That time when you yelled at somebody you are usually affectionate towards and the other time when you were affectionate to someone you are usually not. How many biological, neurological and environmental factors were at play there. What made you react differently than usual?
You are probably asking yourself \u201cBrother, what the hell are you talking about and how does this connect to procrastination?\u201d Without further ado, I am answering this straightforwardly. You are clearly not lacking informational volume, we have that in abundance. You are demanding guarantee that your efforts will be rewarded accordingly. But do you still think that\u2019s possible in the light of what I already said? I doubt it. Not only that immediate engagement is necessary for the reward you cherish so much, but immediate engagement provides structurally indispensable information, because the experience is constituted by constant transformation of eventual to actual. You enter everything with a preconceived idea of how it will go, only when you step in you get to know if you are actually correct. That should be the ideal of everyone who demands certainty, and if you refuse to do it, because you \u201chave enough of a certainty to know how things would go\u201d, then don\u2019t pretend you demand certainty, you only demanded reason to preemptively quit, because every prediction is based on a methodology, and the predictive power is relative to what the model quantifies over\u2026.
I hope that albeit my obscure and at moments disconnected writing style, you understood what needs to be understood, that the information you are looking for is idiosyncratic to experience and that predictive models cannot possibly quantify over everything that has to be taken into account, and that the \u201c90% fail\u201d your prediction machinery outputs might be less trustworthy than it\u2019s comfortable to admit.","title":"Why the Information You Are Waiting for May Not Exist Yet?","updated_at":"2026-08-30T19:24:06Z"}],"hitsPerPage":50,"nbHits":25,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=Arc+Institute&tags=story&hitsPerPage=50&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":24,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"queue":193,"roundTrip":20},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":1,"total":1}},"fetch":{"query":15,"scanning":6,"total":22},"total":24},"query":"Arc Institute","serverTimeMS":219}