As I mentioned in one of the previous comment -> this is my first ever mobile app. I’m basically educating myself building it and found out about F-droid to late in the process, when there were already in-app firebase notifications, that will not work there. As someone mentioned - there is alternative and I’m moving to it in nearest weeks + open sourcing the project, so it will land on F-Droid and will be open to contributions as well. Thanks for pushing for it :)
Indeed, that’s part of the mission! I’m still educating myself in terms of veganism (being vegan for 2 years so far) while building this, so it takes some time to make it good, but I’m genuinely impressed with how far I could get so far and I have no intentions to slow down and your comment is very encouraging to keep pushing it forward :)
I’ll definitely consider this. It gets harder to maintain, the more users are joining, so I need to reconsider some of the aprooval flows, review flows etc. to make sure data-quality is at least stable and hopefully improving first. But UnifiedPush will indeed land in the backlog right below the basic F-Droid version
No valid reason tbh. I just forgot about it while building and now have tons of things to work on (also aside from the project). Will make sure to open the repo for contributions asap and notify everyone in the app that it’s possible now. Thanks for highlighting it :)
Thanks for flagging those! I will add a “leave feedback form” in app. But I surely accept all feedback/corrections/suggestions at hello@plantspak.com and there is a contact form on the web platform as well.
And i will fix those UI issues asap :)
thanks and great question! I run automated scripts every week now and it looks back ~9 days, not 7 - a deliberate overlap buffer so nothing that changed between runs slips through, but for now it’s not automatic - it produces the report for me to work on. I’m considering automating it at some point.
I have a plan for a dedicated F-Droid version of the app. And hope to launch it during the summer still (hope the new google approach to apps will fail as well). It’s a little more tricky for me personally as this is my first-ever production-grade mobile app, so it takes some time to figure out the details. For example, push notifications will not work, for better or worse and I’d like people to get notifications when there is a new vegan spot in their city + I use Expo (this felt like the best path initially) which will not work well for F-droid builds.
So it will take some time - but I will open source it and move to F-Droid and hopefully other catalogs as well.
There are more details on web version, probably still not enough. I did not want to make the place page to crowded with more “technical” data. But I will reconsider it moving on. You may also help me verify the places by markign them in app or on web or suggesting exact changes on web :) thanks
wow, happy to hear that! I’d still recommend to check at least google maps to be sure it’s open and opening hours are correct. My data is OK, but I can’t guarantee yet, unless the verification badge clearly states that it’s verified (I’ve checked quite some places manualy).
I keep improving data every day. So thanks for an encouraging comment :)
I’ve build a platform initially based on OSM imports. It’s good to have it, but the data quality is not reliable enough. I keep researching and cleaning up the data + working on repeatable import from OSM + OSM enrichment, but it’s quite tricky on a scale. Mapped ~50k vegan and vegan-friendly places so far and everyone can add/save their favourite places, add reviews etc. All free, no ads and run by 2 people. And mobile app is available - maybe this will be another optional alternative to consider :)
Contributing back is something I’d genuinely like to do - the challenge is that bulk OSM imports require a formal community proposal, import account, and changeset review process, so it’s not as simple as a one-way sync - will work on that once will be more confident on the data quality. That said, individual fixes you add to OSM will flow into PlantsPack on the next sync.
For the fields that matter most:
If you’re updating OSM entries for vegan restaurants, diet:vegan=only is the highest-impact change you can make - that one tag is enough for PlantsPack to promote a place to the fully-vegan tier on next sync. We have 10+ steps verifications and enrichment process for each place, so even if places is not fully described on OMS - it may end up being better represented on our platform + we run extra checks to verify its vegan_level and status with Google API and AI checks.
Thanks! This is exactly why I’m looking for a feedback. These are real errors from an automated OSM import that got hallucinated descriptions. We’ve corrected them:
You’re right that the AI classifier made embarrassing mistakes on these. We have a community correction system (tap any place -> “Suggest Correction” -> you can change the vegan level), and we’re running a bulk re-classification pass to catch more of these. Also I’ve added the “Actually 100% vegan” button to the list of available verifications.
Overall I’m improving the scraping and enrichment scripts on daily bases thanks to reports like this. I’m quite sceptical about current data state, so reports like this are extremely helpful! Appreciate it!
At the moment there are 22 places in Uddevalla https://www.plantspack.com/vegan-places/sweden/uddevalla, I hope your places started to show up. I agree that “vegan-friendly” is not fully enough to describe the range, but I also don’t like the split on other platforms, so I’m keeping it as is for now, until I will be more confident in scraping logic or will have enough data to split places with good vegan menu and solid options, form those, where we might have a snack or <3 dishes, but they are still worth mentioning. OSM link is in the making as I write this - should be available soon.
And thanks :)
P.S. I’ve used diet:vegan=yes on some initial imports, but it may have been a little mixed. I’m continuously running different checks to make sure the directory on PlantsPack is clear agains multiple APIs, but OSM stays at it’s core.
You’re 100% right, and thank you for this - OpenStreetMap is our primary data source, so the fact that your contributions aren’t showing up is genuinely a bug on our end, not a philosophy difference.
What happened: our last Sweden import was stale, and worse - many OSM places that lack an addr:city tag ended up with no city assigned on our side, so they disappeared from the city page entirely. A place you tagged perfectly in OSM would be in our database but invisible.
We’re running a fresh re-import for Sweden right now with reverse geocoding to fix exactly that gap. Your mapped places should start appearing soon.
And yes - fully agree on OSM as the foundation. Free, open, community-verified, no pay-to-play listings. It’s exactly the spirit we want PlantsPack to embody.
The fact that you’ve personally mapped most of the town is the kind of local knowledge no scraper can replicate. If anything still looks off after the sync (should finish by tomorrow morning and I will get back to you about the exact data-import results for your town), you can also add/edit (your listings) directly on plantspack.com - goes live immediately.
Also your input made our scraping so much better, that I aim to improve a global coverage by the end of the day tomorrow using new logic, so if you may confirm that the coverage looks better and if something is still wrong - that will move the needle even more. Huge thanks! 🙏
Ouch, three fair hits in one go. Thanks 😅
City score - is a caching setting difference in different components. Fixing it now, it’ll match everywhere in an hour.
Bojangles is embarrassing. It shouldn’t be on PlantsPack at all - we should not list chain restaurants on the platform. It came in through an old import and I missed it. Cleaning it up today, along with the other fast-food chains that slipped through.
On top of that, defaulting to alphabetical is a dumb thing as well - agreed - I’m switching the default to fully-vegan places first, then highest-rated (not too many ratings yet), then alphabetical. Alphabetical stays as an option.
Fragmentation is real and I think about it a lot. The case for PlantsPack: HappyCow reviews sit in moderation for weeks, listings go stale, and venue owners pay to manage their page (which creates a commercial incentive that affects what gets featured). We have no ads, no chains, no pay-to-play, and I can add or fix something the community flags the same day.
On mirroring to/from HappyCow - love the spirit, but they don’t have a public API and their ToS prohibits scraping, so it’s not on the table for now (also I’m not confident about all those 250k places, to be honest. and our fully vegan directory is getting closer to theirs every day). If they ever opened ActivityPub support, I’d federate in a heartbeat, but for now - I can’t find a valid reason to do that, even so it’s technically possible.
General goal isn’t to replace HappyCow but to be faster, cleaner, more engaging and community-responsive where HappyCow may have structural reasons to be slow. Both can coexist.
Again - thanks for the feedback. I’ve just started exploring the fediverse and your take on its spirit send me to an exciting journey!
Just added: https://www.plantspack.com/place/lulu-green-boston
The thing is - most of our directory is scrapped using opens source OSM, as we have no budget to scrape google places or other premium sources yet (it’s running 200 requests a day under the free limit to improve the DB), so we’re missing quite some great places. But I’m committed to continuously improve the directory quality programatically and manually and your input has just helped on this journey ;) Thanks
Fixed, a little overworked today 😅 Thanks for pointing that out.
That’s a great point! We try to address it with shared experiences on city page, that will potentially impact the ratings moving on, so that people may raise the exact concerns you’ve shared about Tokyo. At the moment, as we’ve just started - there are not many reviews of places and close to 0 experiences shared, so it’s not impacting the ratings, but the core idea is to resolve this. That’s why we’re also trying to get more vegan-friendly stores, organisations, animal sanctuaries or vegan organisations etc. that may also impact the ratings, however it’s quite hard to gather the information in a good way for now.
I’d appreciate if you may share your experience living in Tokyo and/or your current city (let me know if it does not exist yet -> we may add it with 0 places for now or with your favourite supermarket) - this will help a lot. IN the end of the day - the platform is for people not to promote the city or place. Huge thanks for the comment - really appreciate this feedback :)
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Thanks for the kind words :) I’m enjoying it a lot, but of course can’t make it a full time activity, so, indeed, need to be careful about mindset and clarity to not burnout. But i will keep everyone here posted once it’s open sourced and ready for contributions.