A friend dropped a reel into the surf group chat — some guy in Bali who’d automated his surf checks. Funny. Except we surf North Devon, and the group chat has the same standing question every week. Three hours later, it was software. Now a bot answers it, with receipts.
What it is
Every North Devon beach we surf — Croyde, Saunton, Woolacombe, Putsborough — scored twice a day for the coming weekend across wave-size fit, wind, swell period, tide window, safety, weather and daylight, on a 0–100 scale with hard exclusions that zero a day out when it’s too big to handle or the wind turns onshore. The whole score is gated on size, so a glassy one-footer never masquerades as a good wave — the sweet spot is clean surf in the 3–5 ft range, happy up to head-high when it’s right. Four beaches share one offshore forecast; what separates them is spot logic — wind shelter, tide behaviour, which break actually delivers. On top sits a confidence rating, because a forecast five days out and one for tomorrow are not the same promise. Then friends scattered, so it grew a Sydney break and a New York one. Adding a whole coastline is one JSON file.
Why it exists
Is Saturday worth the drive, or is it a wind-blown mess? Somebody checks three forecast sites, half-reads a tide table, makes a call, and everyone argues anyway. This just… ends that. One tap and the chat gets its answer — Pumping, Good, Marginal, or Skip — with the reasons underneath and a poll of the weekends worth showing up for. Nobody asked for a confidence interval on the surf. They got one anyway.
How it works
Marine forecasts from three wave models, wind ensembles, and tide extremes from two authorities — twice a day, no servers, state committed back to git.
Each beach, each day gets a 0–100 score gated on wave size, with hard exclusions and a best-session window — plus how much to trust it.
Days roll up into a whole-weekend verdict with a confidence rating: the system tells you the call and how sure it is.
A WhatsApp-ready overview with a poll of the weekends worth it, pushed to a phone — human-in-the-loop, one tap to send.
Is it wildly over-engineered for five mates deciding whether to drive to Croyde? Absolutely. But now nobody drives two hours for ankle-slappers, and the arguing has moved on to more important things. Best kind of software, really.
The board is live and refreshed twice a day. Go see the call.
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