Changelog

Getting started

• Create a project straight from a GeoPackage. Drop a .gpkg on New project and Waystones reads its layers, fields, geometry types, coordinate system and extent — no need to design a model in the designer first. See Upload a GeoPackage.
• A Describe your service step after the upload fills in the title, readable layer titles and your contact details, and lets you pick a license. Skip for now keeps the defaults. See Service details.
• Try the sample creates a project from Natural Earth countries and populated places, for a first look without your own data.
• An empty dashboard shows a three-step Getting started checklist instead of "No active projects".
• The welcome email links to the getting-started guide.

Projects

• Project Settings → Service details edits the title, description, license, keywords, contact and layer titles shown on your API's landing page. Settings now also open for projects owned by an organisation.
• A failed OGC API or WMS service shows a failed badge, the error, a link to the deployment log and a Retry deployment button, instead of looking like "Not enabled".
• Deleting projects, deployments, tiles and STAC catalogs no longer pauses for 10–12 seconds.

Docs and website

• Public documentation at waystones.cloud/docs: getting started, core concepts, guides, the QGIS plugin, the CLI, an API reference, troubleshooting and a guide for people coming from GeoServer.
• A pricing page with an FAQ.
• Search engines now see each page as its own page: journal posts, docs and the add-ons page no longer point at the homepage as their canonical address.

Assistant

• The deployment assistant runs on Claude Haiku 5.5.

Fixes

• Vector tile generation is more robust, and worker logs no longer show credentials.
• Billing for organisations, bundled services and WMS performance tiers is reconciled correctly, and request overages are reported as they grow.
• Layer ids match the converted data files for layer names with unusual characters.
• Security hardening for internal endpoints, project updates and sign-in on protected pages.

Designer

• The landing page offers managed hosting — "No Docker or servers? Deploy free on Waystones Cloud" — and Quick Publish lists Waystones Cloud first. The default deploy target is unchanged.
• The header and the help guide link to the documentation.
• Try the sample on the landing page loads Natural Earth countries and cities, for trying Quick Publish without your own data.
• Open a model or dataset from a link: waystones.app/?model=<url>.
• The AI assistant uses Claude Haiku 5.5 and Gemini 3.8 Flash.

Export

• GeoPackage export writes codelist labels and no longer repeats shared codelists.

Deployment kits

• Codespaces kits pin their base image to Ubuntu 24.04.
• Generated READMEs mention Waystones Cloud as a managed alternative.

Worker

• Vector tile generation is more robust; automatic zoom never goes below z12; worker logs no longer show credentials.
• Tasks accepted just before a worker shuts down are no longer cut off.

Fixes

• Security hardening for the AI trial.
• waystones.app serves its robots.txt and sitemap correctly, and unknown paths return 404.

Deployment kits

• The Codespaces quickstart notebook shows the docker-compose equivalent of each step, and explains how to update a running Codespace after publishing again.
• Fixes for Codespaces setup: no Python build from source, a working Jupyter kernel, and no race between the STAC sync and the STAC worker.

Services

• Bursts of requests from a single client to one project are rate-limited, so one runaway script can't use up a project's monthly requests.

Website

• New journal post: GeoServer vs. ArcGIS Online vs. Waystones Cloud.

Deployment kits

• New GitHub Codespaces target: publish to a repository and open a ready-to-run Codespace with the OGC API, vector tiles, STAC and a map viewer with a basemap and your model's styling.
• Clearer docker-compose kit documentation and a correct PostGIS setup. The kit's MinIO runs on host ports 19000/19001.

GitHub

• Publishing to a brand-new, empty repository works.
• Publishing errors show GitHub's explanation, including when the token lacks the workflow scope.

Worker

• Fixes for S3-compatible endpoints over plain HTTP and for files at the bucket root.

QGIS and CLI

• The QGIS plugin publishes layers straight from QGIS 4. See the journal post The Open Road.
• The waystones-cloud CLI: deploy GeoPackages or PostGIS, replace data, manage deployments, API keys, vector tiles and STAC catalogs, update metadata and follow logs.
• Management API keys for the CLI and plugin, created on the API page.
• The API page has step-by-step guides for the QGIS plugin and the CLI.

Projects

• Processing jobs — conversions, snapshots, tiles and STAC — stream their logs live into a log drawer.
• Scheduled PostGIS snapshots on paid plans.
• A monthly allowance of processing jobs per plan.
• Pick the service domain for a deployment: waystones.cloud, waystones.net or waystones.xyz.

Services

• Service descriptions and keywords are generated from the data model.
• QGIS styles carry point sizes and line widths in millimetres, with outlines.
• Database connection strings are stored encrypted.

Designer

• The ER diagram shows shared codelists and shortens long field names; the codelist editor is translated.

Worker

• Worker logs stream live to Waystones Cloud, with sensitive output filtered out.

Waystones Cloud launched publicly on 6 May. See Introducing Waystones Cloud.

Vector tiles

• Generate vector tiles (PMTiles) for a project, with automatic zoom range, simplification and an optional bounding box.
• A ready-made style.json and TileJSON for MapLibre and QGIS.
• A public map viewer for every tile set, with an OpenFreeMap basemap, layer controls and feature pop-ups.

STAC catalogs

• A public STAC catalog viewer, and STAC and tiles for private projects (with API keys).
• Catalog titles come from the data model.

Private services and domains

• Private projects with multiple API keys per project, managed from the service cards. Keys can be sent as a header or ?api_key=. See Wards & Sigils.
• Custom domains on paid plans, with DNS instructions on the project page.
• EU data region: keep a project's data in EU-jurisdiction storage. See EU Data Jurisdiction.

Organisations and branding

• Organisations: share projects, billing and plans with your team.
• Custom branding (add-on): your colour, logo, favicon, brand name and footer on landing pages and viewers.

Dashboard and billing

• A live globe of requests to your services, and a usage breakdown page — see The Travelogue.
• Request overages on paid plans are billed per million; free projects pause when they reach the monthly limit.
• Add-ons and a cost estimator.
• Deploys are blocked, with an explanation, when the data model expects layers the dataset doesn't have.
• Exclude layers or attributes from a deployment or tile set.
• Separate performance tiers for OGC API and WMS.
• Welcome and billing emails.

Website

• The Journal, legal pages for Waystones AS, and EU/EEA data-residency terms.

Vector tiles and STAC

• Deployment kits generate vector tiles (PMTiles), with automatic zoom range and simplification, and STAC catalogs.

Styling

• Point opacity, line opacity and an outline toggle in the style editor, with warnings for styles vector tiles can't show.

Waystones Cloud

• Open in Waystones Cloud sends the model securely by POST instead of in the URL.

Docs

• The README lists live public and private demo services.

Deploying

• Deploy OGC API – Features and WMS per service, with a deploy wizard, live provisioning status and a choice of region.
• Deployment modes: on-demand (sleeps when idle), always-on and high availability.
• Pause, resume and delete deployments.
• Performance tiers for OGC API and WMS.
• Slug validation with an availability check.

Data

• Connect PostGIS or Supabase: tables are snapshotted to cloud-native files and served from storage, with manual re-snapshots.
• GeoPackages are converted to cloud-native GeoParquet and FlatGeobuf and reprojected as needed, so services start fast and need no database.
• Download and replace a project's GeoPackage without changing its URL.
• Download a project's model.json.

STAC

• Generate a STAC catalog with bulk GeoParquet and GeoPackage downloads, partitioned by attribute or region.

Services

• OGC API – Features with paging, CQL2 filtering, queryables and the common coordinate systems QGIS expects.
• WMS from QGIS Server, with categorized styles and labels.

Account

• Subscription plans with storage limits, add-ons and Stripe billing.
• The deployment assistant: ask questions about your deployments in the dashboard (paid plans).

Designer

• Quests and companion characters guide you through modelling, metadata and publishing.
• The AI assistant writes metadata in the language you choose.
• Export to the Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS).
• Map-based bounding-box editing with automatic reprojection.
• Stored database, GitHub and AI credentials are encrypted in the browser, and exported models are scrubbed of secrets.

PostGIS and Supabase

• Better geometry-type detection, feature counts in the publish wizard and extents read from the data. Supabase uses a connection string like PostGIS.

Deployment kits

• One set of Docker images for every target, with faster cold starts.
• OGC API with CQL2 filtering, queryables, a filter builder and bounding-box selection in the items browser.
• Private deployments with multiple API keys.
• Railway kits include the configuration, templates and data they need.

• First version of Waystones Cloud: upload a GeoPackage with a Waystones model and deploy it as OGC API – Features and WMS, then delete a project with everything it created.

First release of Waystones, under the AGPL-3.0.

• A visual data-model editor: layers, fields, codelists, inheritance, shared types, validation and an ER diagram.
• Import models from JSON or YAML, from PostGIS and Supabase schemas, and from GeoPackage, GeoParquet and FlatGeobuf files.
• Export JSON-FG and JSON schemas, YAML, TypeScript and HTML documentation.
• Quick Publish: from a GeoPackage to a deployment kit for OGC API and WMS, with styling and metadata steps.
• Push models and kits to GitHub.
• An AI assistant for descriptions and keywords.
• OGC API – Features Part 2 coordinate-system support, S3-compatible storage, and mobile-friendly service pages.