Visual Review Board

visual-review-board

Photos in the trip issue body are how the family decides whether they're excited about a destination. Bad photos are worse than no photos. This skill encodes what we learned from the #41–#68 incident.

The lesson — what went wrong before

#42–#66 (initial draft): every Kansas issue used the same NPS Midwest Region homepage banner. Every Louisiana issue used the same NPS Atlantic Region homepage banner. The Florida set reused a Henderson_Beach_State_Park_4 photo even on issues for Destin and 30A. The repetition made the issues unconvincing — six different Kansas destinations all visually identical.

Root causes:

1. The original draft used nps.gov/common/uploads/banner_image/<region>/homepage/<hash>.jpg URLs, which are the NPS regional homepage banners — not destination photos. These are intentionally generic.
2. Photos were chosen by URL pattern, not by what the photo actually depicts.

#68 (Switzerland, second attempt): A research subagent reported "all 5 photos verified 200" but two of them returned 400 when re-checked. The agent constructed Wikimedia thumb URLs by hand using the wrong width segment (800px- when the actual cached size for those files was 960px-).

Root cause: Hand-constructing Wikimedia thumbnail URLs assumes you know which widths the cache serves for that specific file. You don't.

Hard rules

1. Source from Wikimedia Commons by default. CC/PD-licensed, hot-link-friendly, stable CDN at upload.wikimedia.org, correctly attributed.
2. Get the canonical thumburl from the API, don't construct it by hand. Wikimedia's thumb cache only serves widths it generated for that specific file. The width buckets vary per file.
3. Re-verify in the main session, never trust subagent verification. Subagents have made false 200-claims twice now.
4. Reject NPS banner_image URLs. Anything matching nps.gov/common/uploads/banner_image/<region>/homepage/ is a regional banner, not a destination photo.
5. The photo must obviously depict the named destination. A "generic prairie" photo for "Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve" is wrong if there's a labeled-by-name alternative available.
6. No URL appears twice across the trip. If two destinations would share a photo, find a different one for the second.

The canonical workflow

For each photo slot in a trip issue:

Step 1: Find the file on Wikimedia Commons

Search:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=<destination+name>&go=Go

Or use Special:Search with namespace File. Pick a file whose:

• Title obviously names the destination (e.g., Bathhouse_Row,_Lamar,_Hot_Springs_National_Park,_Arkansas.jpg)
• License is CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC0, or PD (visible on the file page)
• The image, when clicked, actually shows the destination — not a tangentially related place

Step 2: Query the API for the canonical thumburl

UA="Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; trip-planner/1.0)"
FILE="File:Bathhouse_Row,_Lamar,_Hot_Springs_National_Park,_Arkansas.jpg"
encoded=$(python3 -c "import urllib.parse,sys; print(urllib.parse.quote(sys.argv[1]))" "$FILE")
curl -s -A "$UA" "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=imageinfo&iiprop=url&iiurlwidth=1024&format=json&titles=$encoded" \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; d=json.load(sys.stdin); [print(p['imageinfo'][0].get('thumburl')) for p in d['query']['pages'].values() if 'imageinfo' in p]"

The API returns a thumburl like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Bathhouse_Row%2C_Lamar%2C_Hot_Springs_National_Park%2C_Arkansas.jpg/1280px-Bathhouse_Row%2C_Lamar%2C_Hot_Springs_National_Park%2C_Arkansas.jpg

Wikimedia auto-bumps the requested width (1024 → 1280 here) to a cached size. Use the returned URL exactly.

Step 3: Re-verify with curl (200 + image content-type)

curl -sI -A "$UA" -L -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{content_type}\n" "$THUMBURL"

Expected: 200 image/jpeg or 200 image/png. Anything else, reject.

Important: Wikimedia returns 403 to Python's default urllib User-Agent. Always use curl with a real UA, OR set User-Agent explicitly in Python.

Step 4: Embed in the issue body

Use HTML <img> tag (not Markdown image syntax) so you can specify width:

<img src="<thumburl>" width="320" alt="<short alt — destination name + scene>">

For destination issues, width=420. For visual-review-board tables (5+ scenic anchors), width=320.

Fallback sources (in priority order)

If no good Wikimedia file exists for a destination:

1. NPS direct photo gallery — nps.gov/<unit>/photosvideosmultimedia/index.htm. Photos linked from there are usually fine. NEVER use the homepage banner image.
2. State tourism site — arkansas.com, visitflorida.com, travelks.com, etc. Their CMS image URLs are stable.
3. USFS / BLM — for national forests / BLM lands, fs.usda.gov and blm.gov direct image paths.
4. Flickr Commons — for older / archival photos (search by destination + "Commons").

What NOT to use as a fallback:

• TripAdvisor / Google Images / random blog hosts (link rot, unstable, often unlicensed)
• Stock photo sites (paywall + watermark)
• Instagram / Facebook (links break, often private)

Sanity check before publishing

Before saving the issue body:

• Every photo URL re-verified in the main session (not subagent) with curl + real UA → 200
• Each URL appears at most once across the issue (and once across the trip's child issues)
• Each photo's filename or description obviously matches the destination it represents
• No URL contains nps.gov/common/uploads/banner_image/
• All <img> tags have meaningful alt text (not "preview" — name the actual scene)

Reference patterns

• #41 (gold standard): 7 photos, all destination-specific, mix of state-park CMS URLs and direct photo CDNs. No regional banners.
• #42–#66 (after fix on 2026-04-27): 19 issues, each with exactly one Wikimedia Commons thumb URL. All API-sourced. All re-verified in main session.
• #68 (Switzerland, after fix): 5 thumbs at 960px (the actual cached width for those files). Initial 800px attempt returned 400 — caught by main-session verification.