As a software engineer and surfer, I was bothered by the fact I didn't have a good free option for to see ocean forecasts in an easy and free way. All the options I checked had a huge number of ads, cluttered design or, when it's good, it's paid - which is fair. But I wanted something simpler. I knew that all data that most of those applications use are publicly available. There's a bunch of govt research institutions that provide it. So I asked: "why not?".

I'd like to introduce you Harper. Harper is a free ocean forecast alternative for whoever plans your sports in the water. No ads, no tracker, no accounts, just what really matters. Harper provides surfing guides, spot-specific details, combining data from many institutions like NOAA with local knowledge, so you understand when it's best to score in your favorite spot. More than that, I found it particularly useful when you're planning a surf trip and you wanna understand how that specific post or region work.

Also, Harper provides AI-summary of each spot, so you can quickly understand how the surfing will look like in the next days without reading the charts. Easy for beginners.

On the tech side, everything is boring on purpose. As forecast data is only updated every 6h, our stack is made to be static. The whole website is re-built every 6h. The benefits is clear: it's real fast. It uses Astro and we run data pipelines to generate the whole website. Free & fast, how it should be :)

Also, I open-sourced the library that do most of the heavylifting here: https://github.com/fbenevides/noaa-gfs-wave. Additionally, I made available all the JSON files I built the whole website every 6h. Check "About" section :)

What I'd love feedback on: the design and which spots to add next.

Thank you, Felipe