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A walking route is a single continuous path — so the shape you trace has to be one connected line. Some letters have inner holes (the eye of an R, the loops of a B, the counter of an A) — the system automatically bridges the inner hole to the outer boundarywith a tiny connector, so you don't have to.

If your image has two entirely separate pieces (e.g., two side-by-side letters, or a shape that broke into fragments during line-art extraction), only the largest piece will survive. To include both, use the draw tool in Step 1 to sketch a thin connector line between the two pieces before you click Next — the pipeline then sees one connected shape.

On the Place on map step you have two buttons:

• Auto-find placement — PaceCasso searches the whole city (25 positions × 5–12 rotations × 5–7 scales), snaps each candidate to streets, renders a small map of each, and ranks the best 5 using AI vision. Ignores wherever you have the shape currently.
• Refine around my placement— searches tightly near where you've dragged the shape (±2 km), at similar size (±30%) and rotation (±20°). Use this once you've manually put the shape roughly where you want it.

Both take ~30–60 seconds because Mapbox snaps 20 candidates and PaceCasso's AI analyzes them. The top picks appear as 5 thumbnails in the sidebar — click any to try it.

Your wizard progress is saved in this browser under the key pacecasso-create-draft-v1 in localStorage. Refreshing typically restores where you left off, including your uploaded image (when small enough to fit localStorage). Private or incognito windows won't persist the draft. Click START OVER in the header to clear it. Your image is never uploaded to our servers.

Snapping uses the Mapbox Directions API. If you see errors or empty routes, hit Retry, check your network, or wait a minute if you've been clicking Auto-find rapidly (Mapbox rate-limits free-tier tokens at 300 requests/min; each auto-find uses ~20 of those).

A missing or invalid NEXT_PUBLIC_MAPBOX_TOKEN in production will block all snapping. If you're running locally, check .env.local.

Auto-find uses PaceCasso's AI to classify your shape and rank candidates. If the server isn't configured with an AI key, auto-find silently falls back to showing 5 diverse snap candidates ordered by survival — the sidebar header will say "Candidates" instead of "PaceCasso top picks." The results will be less tuned to your shape.

The final step offers three downloads:

• GPX— the universal format. Import via your watch brand's app (often under "Courses" or "Routes"). Garmin, Coros, Suunto, Apple Watch, Polar all accept GPX.
• GeoJSON — for custom maps, sharing, or importing into mapping tools.
• Plain-text cues— turn-by-turn directions you can read on your phone while running if your watch doesn't show them.

Turn-by-turn may render differently on different watches — some show them as on-course waypoints, others only as a list.

Available today: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC. Each preset defines a map bounding box and the dominant street-grid bearings (Manhattan runs ~29° off true north — that's why letters often look best slightly tilted). More cities coming.

Because they are. Walking routes follow real streets, and real streets are a grid — so any diagonal or curve in your original shape becomes a staircase of blocks. That's the etch-a-sketch aesthetic. If your shape looks unrecognizable, try:

• Scaling up (bigger routes = less zigzag relative to strokes).
• Rotating to align with the street grid (29° on Manhattan).
• Clicking Refine around my placement after nudging it to a neighborhood with a cleaner grid.

Coming in a later release. Today everything is browser-local — no accounts, no cloud sync, no sharing built in. If you clear the browser draft, you lose the route.