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Huellas
A platform to reunite lost pets with their families.
Huellas is the channel that cannot be torn off a lamppost and that reaches the neighbourhood: an app and a website to search for, find and report lost pets, with shelters on board from day one.
In design
- License
- AGPL-3.0
- Phase
- Definition approved, no code yet
- Documents
- 12
What it does
What is planned for the first release (MVP): dogs and cats, Spain, Spanish.
- Reporting a lost petPublish that a pet has been lost, with a printable poster and QR code, and a public link with no login needed.
- Sightings without an accountAnyone can report "I saw it" or "I have it" without creating an account.
- Matching between sightings and reportsThe system suggests sightings for each report and the owner decides, always by hand: Applies, Does not apply or Not sure.
- Map and list with blurringBrowse reports and sightings on a map or in a list, sorted by distance and blurred by default.
- Alert zonesUp to three zones per user, from 500 m to 10 km, with "Lost near you" alerts and configurable quiet hours.
- Shelter panelA public profile for shelters, with their intakes, adoptions and several people running the account.
- Manual blurring of sensitive imagesWhoever publishes marks by hand which photos to blur; there is no automatic detection in the MVP.
- DonationsA tip for the creator, available on the website and in the app, with nothing digital in return.
- Out of the MVPChat, AI photo matching and background location tracking are left for later.
Why it exists
I have a cat I picked up off the street. Nobody in my neighbourhood listened to me and my posters kept being torn down: I felt voiceless. Huellas is the channel I was missing. It does not compete with other apps and it does not chase money: donations only cover costs.
In the MVP: dogs and cats, in Spain and in Spanish. What gets measured is animals reunited and people heard, not growth.
How it is built
- A single webapp wrapped with Capacitor, with the web framework still undecided, to be able to ship on iOS later.
- Its own backend: Postgres with the PostGIS extension for proximity searches.
- Its own API and database on a VPS, with Docker Compose behind Caddy. No Supabase.
- Maps with MapLibre.
- Public website on Vercel while it stays free.
- Free software under AGPL-3.0, code at github.com/alvarotorresc/huellas.