google-earth-engine

# Google Earth Engine Purpose: use GEE's server-side model correctly. The recurring failure modes are **client/server confusion** (calling `.getInfo()` in loops, Python `if` on server objects), **unbounded computation** (timeouts from unscaled reductions), and **silent default scales** (statistics computed at the wrong resolution). ## Should this run here at all? — Earth Engine versus local Answer this before writing any `ee.` code. The decision turns on six things, and you cannot make it without them, so establish them first — asking alongside a provisional recommendation, never instead of one: 1. **Archive extent and duration** — area, and how many years at what revisit. This is what makes server-side worth its constraints; a single scene does not. 2. **Algorithm expressibility** — can the work be written as masks, reducers and band math? Anything needing arbitrary per-pixel iteration, a custom solver, or a Python library GEE does not host belongs local. 3. **Data locality and sensitivity** — restricted or offline data cannot be uploaded, and that ends the discussion regardless of scale. 4. **Interactive limits versus batch** — see [Quotas and etiquette](#quotas-and-etiquette). Anything beyond a ~5 minute interactive request has to be designed as a batch export from the start, not retrofitted when `getInfo` times out. 5. **Export volume** — what actually comes back: a few reduced statistics, or full-resolution per-pixel stacks you will store and rep...