---
id: ch5-vulture
type: spine
title: "Vulture and MapWhiteboard: a private sandbox and a shared map"
readingTime: 3
standalone: true
core: false
teaser: "One tool works on your own inbox, the other on a map that a whole workshop edits at once. What each really does, and how mature it is."
voice: universal
parent: null
diagram: fig-vulture-whiteboard
recallQ: "How do Vulture and MapWhiteboard differ in purpose and maturity?"
recallA: "Vulture is a personal AI sandbox: forwarded e-mails and crawled web pages go into a private collection you can question (Vidzeme uses it for policy monitoring); in the Beta it has become less central. MapWhiteboard is a shared map with live cursors and features; a simplified instance is deployed and it supports pilot discussions about boundaries, corridors and land use."
highlights:
  - "Vulture: forward-to-ingest, private Qdrant collection, GPT-4o answers, URL crawling"
  - "The Vidzeme Planning Region uses Vulture to track policy developments"
  - "MapWhiteboard: OpenLayers and HSLayers-NG with a WebSocket API; rated TRL 7 in D4.1"
  - "Monaghan's technical pilot TP1 pairs MapWhiteboard with action-foresight and system dynamics"
status: accepted
concept: vulture-mapwhiteboard
conceptTitle: "Vulture and MapWhiteboard"
parents: tool-ecosystem
lang: en
lens: generic
depth: standard
formalism: none
visuality: balanced
lengthBand: standard
genre: explainer
state: edited
carriers: prose|diagram
---

These two tools have opposite jobs. **Vulture** is a personal sandbox for AI experiments on your own material. **MapWhiteboard** is a shared map where a group works on the same view at the same time.

## Vulture: a sandbox, not a core service

Vulture was built for user needs identified in the WP3 buddy exercises (D4.1 §6.4). Users forward e-mails to a dedicated address, with PDFs, web clippings or WhatsApp messages attached. Forwarding is a deliberate act, which D4.1 links to GDPR compliance. Each item lands in a **private collection that only that user can see**. It is split into chunks and embedded in a Qdrant vector database, and the user can then ask questions in plain language; GPT-4o writes the answer from the retrieved context. Users can also register URLs for Vulture to crawl for topics they care about.

**Pilot use:** in the Latvian pilot, the Vidzeme Planning Region uses Vulture to monitor and analyse policy developments (D4.1 §6.4).

**Status:** an alpha in D4.1. In the Beta it has "remained largely stable and has become less central than originally expected", partly because tools such as OpenClaw and more integrated AI workflows elsewhere took over some of its role. Its outputs are provisional and lack the reproducibility and provenance guarantees of the core services. D4.2 therefore plans selective maintenance: functions that prove useful move into structured platform services (D4.2 §3.5).

## MapWhiteboard: working together on one map

D4.1 compares MapWhiteboard to Miro and Figma, applied to maps. It lists pre-defined maps with editable layers, GeoJSON upload and download, WMS layers, shared cursors, simultaneous editing, user-created layers and publishing of features through web services. The tool is built on OpenLayers and HSLayers-NG with a WebSocket API, and D4.1 rates it **TRL 7** (D4.1 §6.9).

**Status:** for the Beta, a new simplified instance has been developed and deployed. It exchanges cursors between OpenLayers maps and features between vector layers. That covers basic shared navigation and shared objects, but it is not yet a full participatory planning suite with moderation and saved annotations (D4.2 §3.8).

**Pilot use:** MapWhiteboard supported collaborative spatial interpretation wherever pilots had to discuss boundaries, corridors, land use, infrastructure or local assets (D4.2 §6.3). In County Monaghan, technical pilot TP1 combines it with action-foresight and [system dynamics](#c/system-dynamics) to define and implement the rural-urban RAP (project fact sheet).

D4.2 wants MapWhiteboard and the MAA tool built into RAP and foresight workflows instead of running as separate applications (§11.1).

**How-to:** [Using Vulture](#ch5-guide-vulture) · [Running a MapWhiteboard session](#ch5-guide-mapwhiteboard).

**Sources:**
- D4.2 PoliRuralPlus Platform Beta, §3.5 Vulture productivity sandbox; §3.8 MapWhiteboard collaborative mapping; §6.3 Usability, performance and functional observations; §11.1 Remaining development priorities. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/421/D4.2_PoliRuralPlus_Platform_Beta.pdf)
- D4.1 PoliRuralPlus platform design, §6.4 Vulture; §6.9 MapWhiteboard Evolution. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/162/D4.1_PoliRuralPlus_platform_design_v1.pdf)
- PoliRural+ public fact sheet (Grant Agreement facts), technical pilot TP1. [poliruralplus.eu](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/)