[frewsxcv]

The place step only ever offered the places iNaturalist returns for the browser's geolocation, so there was no way to study somewhere you aren't. This adds a search box on that step, backed by iNaturalist's place autocomplete endpoint.

Behaviour

An empty box keeps showing the nearby places, so search is an alternative to the location-based suggestions rather than a step in front of them:

Box	Shows
empty	the nearby places, exactly as before
fake	matching places from autocomplete
no matches	No places found matching “…”.
request failed	Could not search for places. Check your connection and try again.

Clearing the box brings the nearby places back. Selecting a searched place dispatches the same PLACE_SELECTED action, so nothing downstream changes.

Queries are debounced (300ms), and a query that changes while a request is in flight aborts it — otherwise a slow response for an earlier prefix could land after a newer one and overwrite it.

Supporting changes

• geometry_geojson on Place is now optional. The autocomplete endpoint isn't documented to return geometry for every hit, and the map preview is the only thing that needs it. A place without geometry now renders as a card with no map, rather than an empty map of the Atlantic. The nearby path is unaffected.
• apiV1Fetch rejects on a non-2xx response and accepts an AbortSignal. It previously read results off an error body and handed back undefined, which gave the new error state nothing to trigger on.
• Place cards are keyed by place id rather than list index. Leaflet only initializes a map on mount, so with index keys a searched place would have reused the previous place's map instance.

Verification

npm run lint, npx jest --config=configs/jest.json and npm run build all pass.

Driven in a real browser (Playwright, against the offline fixture since this sandbox can't reach api.inaturalist.org):

1. Nearby places show with an empty box ✅
2. A matching query swaps the list ✅
3. A non-matching query shows the empty state and no cards ✅
4. Clearing the box restores the nearby list ✅
5. Selecting a searched place advances to the taxa step with the place in the navbar ✅

No page errors or React exceptions in any step.

Two things worth flagging

• I could not exercise the real endpoint. This environment's egress proxy blocks api.inaturalist.org, so the live request path is unverified against the actual API. The one assumption it rests on is that autocomplete results carry id and display_name — id is all the rest of the flow needs. I made geometry optional rather than assume it's present.
• The search box still sits behind the geolocation prompt. Reaching this step requires LocationStep to succeed, so someone who denies location can't get to the search at all — and that error path is currently a no-op expression that renders nothing. Letting the user skip straight to search is the natural follow-up, but it changes the app's step machine, so I left it out. Happy to do it if you want.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01J7nU5T9UJU7ydrRdENiKuQ

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Generated by Claude Code