Today I refreshed the Intelligence card on EF-Map. It's the card that comes up when you search for a player, a tribe or a solar system in the search box, and it was one of the older parts of the Intel side of the site. The first version went in on 15 April, so it's six months old. Last week I refreshed most of the Intel tools around it, Gate Activity, Economy, the Activity Tracker, the Query Console and the Panel Creator, and the card just sat there looking like April.
So this is a before and after, but it's also about something I keep noticing. I take a feature that's been running for a while, describe what I think would make it better, and the model I'm working with now builds something I wouldn't have got from the one I had when the feature was first made. And none of the old work gets thrown away. It's what the new version stands on.
There's a short video of it here, searching a pilot, a tribe and a system, with the tabs switching what the map shows.
The April card
The April version did a lot. Search a pilot and you got their combat by period, their activity, their bases and the systems they were likely to be in, all from an indexer on my server. A Structure Intel view followed a couple of days later, solar system cards arrived in June along with the share cards (I wrote about the search in Sui Intelligence Search for EVE Frontier Players and Tribes and the share cards in Shareable Intelligence Cards back in June), and in July it picked up a Gate Network section when Gate Activity launched.
The problem was the shape. Every one of those things was a folded section, and you opened them one at a time. And the map behind the card, which is the whole point of the site, didn't draw any of it. You could click a system in a list and it would take you there, one at a time, but you never saw someone's bases and fights laid out together.
What I asked for
My whole brief was one dictated message while I was looking at my own card. Searching myself, last activity an hour ago, fine. Then combat, bases, gate network, inferred bases, system intel. What I said was "I'm just wondering if that needs a refresh on the back of us refreshing all the other Intel tools", and "basically cast an eye over it". I added that "wow factor is something I've been going for recently", and the one line I think did the most work: "We are a map, so if there's map specific information, let's draw that on the map."
Shortly after I sent a follow-up, because I'd realised what I actually meant. "The key thing I'm going for here... is unification. We've got all these separate tools and separate ways into things but the data is in different places." That's the bit I'd never have known how to specify properly. The Killboard knows things about a pilot, Gate Activity knows other things, Economy knows other things, and the old card only had some of it.
The agent went away and looked at what every Intel tool keeps per pilot, per tribe and per system before suggesting anything. Then it asked me two questions, the first with a sketch of each layout. Should the card be tabs that change what the map shows, one long scrolling page, or a slim card that leaves the detail to the map? And when the card opens, should the map draw and fly the camera there, just draw, or wait until I ask? I took its recommendation both times, tabs that drive the map, and draw and fly.
What it built
Search a pilot now and you get one card. The header has the name, the tribe, how long ago they were last seen on chain, and a 24 hour clock of when they're active, built from 30 days of their on-chain activity. Under that are five headline numbers, kills, activity, bases, gates and how much they've stored, net, and every one of them opens the tab behind it.
The map is the part I'm most pleased with. Their bases and located structures get teal rings, the systems they fight in get red rings, and the gates they own show up as icons with a line between the two ends. The camera sweeps over to it when the card opens. Hover one of those stars and the hover card tells you what they have there. The tabs pick what the map shows, so Combat is just the red rings, Territory is just the bases and Gates is just the gate network, and Overview has all of it plus a few things that stand out, like their home system, where they fight most, their killboard rank and their busiest gate.
The unification bit is the Open in row. The old card already had Killboard and Activity buttons. Now Gate Activity and Economy are in the same row, and each one opens already on that pilot or tribe. Tribes get the same card plus a Members tab. Solar systems got the same treatment: kills there and in charted systems within 100 light years, which tribes and pilots have been fighting there this cycle, who runs the structures there, and the gates that sit there or jump there, drawn as lines to the far end.
One note on the pictures. The pilot and tribe in them, Ilsa Marrow and the Halcyon Survey Corps, are made up. I didn't want to put a real pilot's whole footprint in a blog post. The stars and systems are real, and so are the kills, operators and fighting on the system card.
Nothing underneath had to change
This is the part I think is worth writing down. The refresh didn't touch the data side at all, no change to the indexer or the intel API on my server. The card still reads the same player and tribe summaries the April version was built on, the system card still uses the builder from June, and the share cards and copy summary from June still work the same way. The gate placement comes from the model Gate Activity got last week, and the look is the shared style the other Intel tools got last week too. Even the old Structure Intel list is still there, under Territory.
So nothing was rewritten for the sake of it. Every earlier version is still in there underneath, and I think that's why it could happen in a day. If the data side had needed rebuilding as well, it would have been a different job entirely.
My part
My part was the brief, the follow-up, the two choices and then actually using it. It got checked before I ever saw it, by a separate reviewer agent that's told to go looking for problems, and that found three real bugs: the system card resetting itself whenever data refreshed in the background, clicking a pilot's name possibly opening a different pilot with a similar name, and a number in the system card's Who fights here list that read like kills there but was really the pilot's kills everywhere this cycle. All fixed before the preview.
Then I tested it, first signed out and then signed in. Signed out, the window opened at the right size and then slowly crept down to the bottom of the screen, 35 to 40 pixels every three seconds, with nothing touched. It turned out the Query Console had been doing the same thing since last week, and the Panel Creator sits in the same kind of window. I'm nearly always signed in, so I'd not noticed. That got fixed for all of them, and signed in I was very impressed, so it went to production the same day. It's also in What's new in EF-Map now, which needed a small change because the card isn't in the Tools Library.
Why this keeps happening
Looking back over the last few months, this is turning into a pattern. Cinematic Mode, the oldest feature on the site, got rebuilt in July (Refreshing Cinematic Mode). The hover card got its refresh after a trailer showed me how dated it looked (Making a Trailer Showed Me What I'd Left Behind). Then over the last ten days the Log Parser was rebuilt for Cycle 7, the Intel tools were refreshed, the Tools Library got cards, and today the EF Helper window and this card.
Part of it is just that EF-Map has been running for over a year now (EF-Map Is One Year Old), so there's more old stuff to come back to. But a lot of it is the models. When the April card was built I was still dictating what I wanted into ChatGPT and having it write the prompt for my coding agent, which I wrote about in Opus 5.5 Changed How I Use AI Agents. Now I talk to the agent directly, it does its own research across the repo, asks me the questions that are actually mine to answer, builds it, and has another agent review it before I see anything.
I don't think the April card was bad. It was the right card for what I could get built back then, and nearly everything in it carried over, just arranged differently. What's changed is how far a fairly loose description gets me. "Draw that on the map" and "unification" aren't a spec, and six months ago I'd have had to turn them into one. So I think this will keep happening. Whatever I build today will probably look dated in six months too, and I'll refresh it then.
Try it
Search for a pilot, a tribe or a system in the search box at ef-map.com. The Intel tools are free during the Cycle 7 launch, you just need to sign in with your wallet. If you search yourself and something looks off, or there's something you'd want on the card, let me know and I'll get it updated.