Corpus catalog

Every ambiscape analyze writes <session>/analysis/summary.json. The catalog command aggregates them across a whole corpus into one table — the cross-session view, built in milliseconds from cached summaries alone (no audio, no features).

ambiscape catalog CORPUS/ --sort diffuseness_median
#   10 sessions -> CORPUS/analysis/catalog.csv and catalog.md
#         0.90  stavanger-foyer
#         0.89  montpellier-airport
#         ...

catalog.csv is session-per-row for analysis (pandas, R); catalog.md is the transposed descriptor-per-row table for a consolidated report. Sessions with different descriptor sets — older caches, optional modules — are handled by taking the union of keys and blanking where a session lacks one, so a growing corpus never breaks the table.

Add --states (CLI) or include_states=True (collect) to expand each multi-state session into extra "<session>::<state>" rows drawn from its states.json, right after the pooled row — the state-resolved corpus view in one table.

In a notebook

from ambiscape import catalog

col = catalog.collect("CORPUS/")            # {session: summary}
catalog.to_csv(col, "catalog.csv")
catalog.rank(col, "ndsi")                   # sessions by any descriptor
catalog.outliers(col, "azimuth_R", z=1.5)   # what stands out, as z-scores

rank returns (session, value) pairs sorted on any numeric descriptor; outliers flags sessions more than z standard deviations from the corpus mean — the cheap "which session is unusual, and on what axis" query that turns a growing database into a comparative instrument.

Keep summaries current

The catalog reflects whatever is in each summary.json. After upgrading ambiscape, re-run analyze (or refresh the summaries) so every session carries the same descriptor set before cataloguing.