Avow

Avow is an open-source criminal case documentation and legal research platform that helps users record, organize, and analyze alleged criminal incidents while identifying potentially applicable laws across different jurisdictions. It aims to improve transparency, legal awareness, and structured case documentation through a searchable and evidence-focused approach.

Table of Contents

• Routing
• PWA and Offline
• Contributing

Routing

Screen	URL
Home	index.html
Categories (grid)	categories.html
Single category	categories.html?cat=<categoryId>
Search / all cases	search.html (optional ?q= / ?view=cases)
Profile directory	profile.html
Single profile	profile.html?id=<personId>
Case detail	case.html?id=<caseId>
Offline fallback	offline.html (served by the service worker)

All query parameters are treated as lookup keys only they are never echoed into the DOM as HTML.

PWA and Offline

• pwa/manifest.json name, full icon set (192/512 + maskable + SVG), standalone display, theme/background colors, app shortcuts, scope ../.
• pwa/service-worker.js precaches the app shell on install; cache-first for shell assets, stale-while-revalidate for data/*.json, network-first for navigations with offline.html fallback. Caches are versioned and auto-cleaned on activate.
• Install ui.js captures beforeinstallprompt and shows a custom install banner, then registers the worker.

Important

The service worker precaches the shell, so bump CACHE_VERSION in pwa/service-worker.js whenever you change shipped HTML/CSS/JS or icons otherwise installed clients keep serving the old cached files.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! We appreciate bug fixes, accessibility improvements, documentation updates, code cleanups, performance enhancements, and new icon/category presets. Feel free to open an issue, submit a pull request, or suggest new ideas to help improve the project.

1. Fork and create a feature branch.
2. Keep the no-dependency, no-build, no-innerHTML constraints intact.
3. Bump CACHE_VERSION if you changed shell assets.
4. Open a PR describing the change.

By contributing, you agree that your contributions are licensed under the project's Apache-2.0 license.