Border Pulse

Real-time US-Mexico border wait times. Static site on GitHub Pages at borderpulse.com.

Stack

• Vite + React 18 + Tailwind + shadcn/ui
• Data: U.S. Customs and Border Protection official feed (bwt.cbp.gov/api/bwtpublicmod)
• Exchange rate: exchangerate.host / open.er-api.com
• Hosting: GitHub Pages (static), no backend
• Monetization: Adsterra Native Banner (live on borderpulse.com)

Data pipeline

scripts/fetch-cbp.mjs runs on a scheduled GitHub Action. It hits the CBP JSON endpoint, accepts either English or Spanish localized border/status values, normalizes the shape, and commits public/data/crossings.json. Same cadence for public/data/exchange-rate.json.

Paid southbound Google Maps estimates are paused and are not part of the production workflow. The retained scripts/fetch-sb.mjs utility is historical/manual only; production serves the official northbound CBP feed.

On Pages, the client reads those static JSON files. Vercel previews use the five-minute CDN-cached /api/public/crossings endpoint with the static snapshot as fallback; both preserve actual timestamps. No account is required.

The collector also materializes rolling 30-day history. The prepared Vercel publisher builds bundled data daily at 08:17 UTC and when app code changes, not for every data commit. It is disabled until credential approval and starts in preview. See refresh operations.

Local dev

npm install
npm run dev

Refresh data locally:

npm run fetch:cbp
npm run fetch:fx
# Historical paid southbound utility; guarded and not used in production:
# ALLOW_PAID_SOUTHBOUND_FETCH=yes npm run fetch:sb

Deploy

Pushing to main triggers .github/workflows/deploy.yml, which builds and publishes to GitHub Pages. Custom domain borderpulse.com via public/CNAME + IONOS DNS (A records to GitHub Pages IPs).