Preserve meaning and provenance at standard interfaces so aircraft, models, interfaces and hosting remain replaceable.
Separate the core scientific objects
Represent plans, sampling events, flights, sensor assets, machine candidates, reviewed observations, identity links and estimates as separate objects joined by stable identifiers. A detection is not a biological individual, and a flight is not always a complete survey. This separation allows model updates without overwriting sampling effort or verified decisions.
Use established standards at the boundaries
Darwin Core provides shared terms for events, occurrences and sampling effort. STAC supports discovery of spatiotemporal assets such as imagery. GeoJSON can exchange geometries, but matching formats do not remove the need to document units, coordinate assumptions, timestamps and uncertainty. Maintain explicit mappings and definitions for project-specific fields.
Organize the interface around decisions
Lead with location, period, estimate and interval, change from the previous survey and unresolved quality issues. Follow with maps and supporting imagery; expose model settings when needed. Label states such as unprocessed, awaiting review, verified and excluded in text, not colour alone. Simplicity means progressive access to detail rather than deletion of evidence.
Keep agents and hosting replaceable
Maintain data contracts, JSON/CSV interchange, API definitions, commands, version history and runbooks outside any one chat history. Claude, Grok or another agent can work through authorized Git, APIs or command-line tools when those interfaces exist. This is a platform design principle, not a claim that production API access or permissions are automatically granted.
Evidence & further reading
Check the original study conditions, species and location before using a result in a plan. Do not transfer findings universally across species and settings.