Compendium

Reference material and specifications for the VersaTiles ecosystem. Where Basics introduces concepts and Guides walks through specific tasks, the Compendium documents the canonical details — the ideas, formats and contracts the project is built on.

Foundations

• Introduction — How web maps work, why building one is hard, and how VersaTiles approaches the problem.
• A wider perspective — Mission, core values and the principles that guide the project.

Specifications

• Reference model — The four-layer architecture and the contracts between layers.
• Container format — The on-disk structure of .versatiles files.
• Frontend bundle — Contents and conventions of the prebuilt frontend package.
• Extended TileJSON — Optional metadata fields that extend the TileJSON 3.0 spec.
• Shortbread schema extensions — Opt-in, beyond-spec features VersaTiles adds to the Shortbread vector-tile schema (3D buildings, localized names, …).
• Shortbread low-zoom land cover — An optional ESA-WorldCover-derived tileset that fills Shortbread's land / water_polygons layers at the low zoom levels OSM doesn't cover.

Ecosystem

• Tools — Web tools and libraries built around VersaTiles.
• Repository dependencies — How the repositories of the project build on each other, and where each link is declared.