Migrated findstarlink.com (and its mobile apps) from the TLE to OMM data format for satellite tracking. TLEs use a 5 digit identifier for satellites, and we’ve basically run out of them. This was a very intrusive change in what’s effectively a legacy codebase for me (most of the code has been untouched for 6 years).
Celestrak (the source of satellite info) has long-recommended moving to the OMM format, which supports a larger number of satellites. They stopped publishing new TLE data for satellites last week (i.e. early May, 2026), because we’ve run out of possible TLE identifiers.
GPT-5.4 (High) was very effective at this kind of work. I used Copilot in a VS Code workspace, with two phases of planning (high-level, then low-level) with dialogue, followed by implementation. I then tested locally, reviewed the code, and deployed manually since it involved a coordinated rollout across different components (data, api, website, npm library, ops dashboard).
The site and apps seem to be doing okay after the migration, although I ended up causing a 30 minute outage on the mobile apps yesterday. I need better test and deployment systems for this project, since a lot of my manual work (and the 30 minute outage) could’ve been avoided through better automation.