SafetyWatch

Reporting, end to end

The report form has three steps: the details, a location picked on a map (with OpenStreetMap address lookup), and a review. Signed-in users report under their name; anyone can choose to report anonymously, and an anonymous report never carries a user id.

Every report gets a 16-character tracking ID generated on the server. The tracking page shows the status and the reporter’s own text for that one report, and nothing else.

Photos made small and safe in the browser

Evidence photos are downscaled and re-encoded as JPEG on a canvas before upload, so three fit in one request. Re-encoding also strips EXIF metadata such as the GPS position of the camera.

The photos live in a private Vercel Blob store, and their URLs never reach the browser. They are served through a route that applies the same visibility rule as the report itself.

AI that drafts, people decide

“Extract details from image” sends one photo to Gemini from a server action, so the API key never reaches the browser. The response is constrained to a JSON schema generated from the same Zod schema that then validates it, and the prompt treats any text inside the photo as evidence to describe, never as instructions. The result only pre-fills the form; the reporter reviews it and submits. If the model fails, the form simply asks for the details.

Access rules, enforced on the server

• Roles live in the database and cannot be set through sign-up or profile updates. Only the seed script grants admin.
• Every mutation is a server action that checks the session and role and validates its input with Zod. Users can edit only their own pending reports, and only admins change a status or delete a report.
• Public pages query only verified and resolved reports, and those queries never select the reporter’s name or email.

Maps and statistics

Verified reports appear on a Leaflet map with marker clustering, a heatmap and a satellite layer, filterable by crime type. “Nearest first” sorts by great-circle distance in SQL, and the schema has an index for each public query: status with incident time, owner with creation time, crime type, coordinates and locality. Statistics break incidents down by type, location, month and hour in a configurable time zone.

Stack and deployment

Next.js 16 with the App Router, Server Components and Server Actions; PostgreSQL through Prisma 7; Better Auth for email/password and Google sign-in; deployed on Vercel. The app validates its environment at startup and refuses to run while a required variable is missing.

Limits and next steps

• There is no email sending yet, so no email verification, password reset or status notifications. Reporters follow up with their tracking ID.
• Anonymous submissions and image analysis are not rate-limited yet (sign-in and sign-up are).