Nearly Departed

Who's buried near you, and why did they matter? Discovery-first, story-first — the inverse of search-first apps like Find a Grave.

Features

• Discover — nearby notable dead within a chosen radius (10 / 25 / 50 / 150 km), grouped by cemetery on a map and in a list
• Search anywhere — drop the radius on any place in the world, not just your current location
• Person detail — bio, dates, occupations, and a Wikipedia summary per soul
• Favorites — save people locally, works offline, no account required
• Avatars — pick your ghoul from 16 hand-drawn monster stickers, no account required
• Account sync — optional passwordless email OTP or Sign in with Apple; favorites and avatar mirror to Supabase (local-first — signing out keeps everything on device)
• Localized results — SPARQL query returns labels in the device language, falling back to English

Data sources

No API keys required — all public, unauthenticated endpoints:

• Wikidata SPARQL (query.wikidata.org) — burial place (P119) + coordinates (P625) via wikibase:around; nearest-150 subquery first, then enrich, to keep dense-city queries fast
• Wikipedia REST summary API — bio text for the person detail screen
• Photon (komoot, OpenStreetMap-based) — geocoding for "search anywhere"

Tech stack

• Expo SDK 56 (React Native 0.85, CNG — ios/android are generated, not hand-edited)
• expo-router (typed routes) + TypeScript
• NativeWind (Tailwind for React Native)
• TanStack Query for data fetching/caching
• MapLibre (@maplibre/maplibre-react-native), CARTO dark-matter style
• expo-location for device location
• Supabase — passwordless email OTP + Apple sign-in
• AsyncStorage-backed local favorites behind a FavoritesRepository interface (src/lib/favorites/) — swappable for a Supabase-backed implementation later without touching call sites

Getting started

npm install
npx expo start --dev-client

Expo Go will not work — this app has native modules (MapLibre, Apple auth). You need a dev client build first (see below).

Building for iOS

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
RCT_USE_PREBUILT_RNCORE=0 RCT_USE_RN_DEP=1 npx expo run:ios

Notes:

• The project path must contain no spaces — the React Native prebuilt-artifact download breaks otherwise.
• After adding any native module, run npx expo prebuild --no-install and pod install before run:ios.
• Day-to-day loop once a dev client is installed: npx expo start --dev-client.

Project structure

src/app/           expo-router routes (index, explore, person/[qid], auth, profile, legal/)
src/components/    UI components (soul-card, souls-map, place-search, ...)
src/lib/           wikidata.ts, wikipedia.ts, geocode.ts, supabase.ts, favorites/
src/hooks/         use-nearby-souls, use-device-location, use-theme
legal/             source markdown for privacy policy + terms (synced into the app — see scripts/sync-legal.mjs)

Scripts

• npm run ios / npm run android — native builds (run the sync-legal prestep automatically)
• npm run web — Expo web
• npm test — vitest, logic-only tests (src/**/*.test.ts; wikidata, geocode, favorites)
• npm run test:watch
• npm run lint — expo lint

Legal

Privacy policy, terms of service, and support are also published at nearly-departed.miacodes.com:

• Privacy policy
• Terms of service
• Support

Source markdown lives in legal/ and is synced into src/content/legal.ts for the in-app screens (src/app/legal/) by scripts/sync-legal.mjs.

License

Proprietary — copyright (c) 2026 Mia Dugas, all rights reserved. See LICENSE.