Run automated tracking from the admin as a post-processing method, with editable settings

[mihow]

Summary

This PR answers one question: can Antenna run automated tracking at all? An admin can pick sessions (or a capture set) in the Django admin, open the same intermediate form used for class masking and the small size filter, adjust the tracking settings, and start a post-processing job. The job links each detection to the matching detection in the next capture, merges the occurrences those links join into one occurrence within the session, and records what it did as an algorithm result on each occurrence it changed. The occurrence's history then shows a tracking card: how many detections were joined, how much the insect moved, how much its box changed size, whether the labels agree, which occurrences were merged in, and the settings and job of the run.

Every setting that decides whether two detections are linked is editable on the form and saved on the job, so runs can be compared. The defaults are a plain baseline and only a starting point; choosing recommended settings is the next step (#1468). Because a run cannot be undone inside Antenna yet (#1477), a "Preview only" setting reports what a run would change without writing anything, and every result records the grouping from before the run so a reset can restore it.

This PR is stacked on #1461 (algorithm results and the occurrence history) and supersedes the "run" part of #1272. Occurrence editing, confirmation, the review UI, vector-based matching and a dedicated export stay out (listed below).

List of Changes

Change (effect)	How	Notes
Admins can run tracking on selected sessions or capture sets from the Django admin, with a settings form	tracking post-processing task; run_tracking action on the Events and Source image collections admin pages	The Events action creates one job per project. A capture set selects the sessions it touches; all processed captures of those sessions are tracked
Every cost setting is editable, and the form cannot drift from the task	Settings are fields of the task's pydantic schema; a generic helper builds the admin form fields (label, help text, default, bounds) from the schema	Class masking and size filter forms are unchanged
Settings: cost cutoff, three term weights (overlap, size, distance), optional limits on overlap, size ratio and distance, and an optional maximum time between captures	Pairs failing an enabled limit are never candidates; captures further apart than the time limit are not compared	Defaults reproduce the plain sum (1 − overlap) + (1 − size ratio) + distance at cutoff 1.0, no limits. Help text says they are a starting point tuned for captures about 20 seconds apart
An admin can see what a run would do before running it	"Preview only" setting: the run matches and plans as usual, then reports links, merges and occurrence counts before and after on the job, and writes nothing
Detections from two detectors are never chained together	"Detector" setting limits a run to one detection algorithm; without it, a session with detections from more than one detector is skipped with a reason	Two detectors find the same insect twice, and their boxes would form parallel chains
Detections in neighbouring captures are linked, and the occurrences they join are merged	Detection.next_detection; greedy lowest-cost one-to-one matching per pair of captures; the merge plan is worked out in memory (chains.py) and merges whole occurrences into the first one in capture order	A run only adds: it never takes a detection out of its occurrence, and never replaces or removes a link. A merge never crosses a session boundary
Sampled sessions can be tracked	Captures are ordered over processed captures only, so an unprocessed capture between two processed ones does not prevent comparing them	Captures without a timestamp are left out
A busy session is written quickly, so other writers wait less	Each table is written in a few bulk statements: one UPDATE … FROM unnest(…) each for links and occurrences, one insert, one delete, and a determination recompute per changed occurrence	Measured below: 38.1 s to 11.6 s of transaction on the busiest session of a production copy
Each changed occurrence gets a record of the run, with statistics people can sort by later, and the grouping it replaced	A tracking algorithm result per linked occurrence (see the table below); its sortable value is the movement per step	Statistics are a snapshot of the run, not columns on Occurrence. Each run adds its own result
The occurrence history shows what tracking did	A tracking card in the history timeline	Screenshot below
Human identifications and earlier results survive merges	Identifications and algorithm results move onto the kept occurrence before the merged ones are deleted; a user who identified two merged occurrences keeps only the newest identification active, as saving an identification does	By default, sessions with human identifications are skipped entirely
An identification made during a run cannot be lost	The write locks the session's occurrences first; the human-identification guard runs under that lock and follows the session's detections	An identification saved on an occurrence the run merges away waits for the run, then fails (see Known limitations)
Tracking never casts a species vote of its own	The determination is recomputed from the existing classifications after a merge; the result records it before and after	Later class masking still works on merged occurrences (tested)
Recomputing a determination does fewer than half the lookups	update_occurrence_determination cleared its cached properties with hasattr(), which computes them first; it now drops them directly	Shared code; pipeline result saving benefits too
Long sessions do not get the job reaped, and the job row is not held locked	Each session is matched outside any transaction, saving progress every few comparisons or seconds; links and merges are then written in one transaction that re-checks the guards and skips the session if it changed meanwhile
One failing session does not lose the others	Each session is tracked on its own; a failure is logged and counted, the other sessions continue and their counts are refreshed, and the job is marked failed at the end
Already-tracked sessions are left alone by default	"Only track sessions that have not been tracked" guard: a session is tracked when any of its detections has a link	Sessions grouped some other way without links are tracked. Turned off, a run adds links between detections that have none and merges what they join
Regrouping sessions never leaves a tracked occurrence spanning two sessions	A regroup that draws a session boundary through an occurrence splits it into one occurrence per session and copies its identifications to each piece, under the sessions' locks	Skipped after one indexed query when the touched sessions have no tracking links, so regroups elsewhere cost nothing extra
Session and station counts stay correct after merges	After the run, the cached counts of each tracked session and of its station are refreshed within the job
Adding the link column does not block the detection table	Column added as metadata only; the unique index is built concurrently, then the foreign key is added unvalidated and validated separately; the brief strong locks give up after 10 s	See Deployment Notes
The pure matching, merge-plan and statistics code is kept apart from the job	ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/: config.py, matching.py, chains.py and stats.py contain no Django code and their tests need no database; task.py holds the job; sessions.py the session lock and regroup split	Importing them still loads Django through the package, so an offline script runs them inside the Django environment

What a tracking result records

Field	Meaning
motion (also the result's sortable value)	Average distance between consecutive detection centres, as a share of the image diagonal
path_length	Total distance between consecutive detection centres, same units
size_change	Largest box area divided by the smallest (1 = no change)
distinct_taxa	Distinct taxa among the final (terminal) machine classifications of the occurrence's detections; classifications by post-processing methods are left out
label_agreement	Share of those same classifications naming the determination after the run; human identifications are not counted
detection_count	Detections in the occurrence
link_costs	The matching cost of each link this run made in the occurrence, in capture order, to see why detections were joined
merged_occurrence_ids	Occurrences folded into this one by the run
determination_before_id / determination_after_id	The determination before and after the run
detection_ids / previous_occurrence_ids	The occurrence's detections in capture order, and the occurrence each was in before the run
moved_identifications / withdrawn_identification_ids	Identifications moved onto this occurrence, with the occurrence each came from, and those withdrawn as duplicates

Related Issues

Stacked on #1461. Supersedes the run part of #1272. Calibration of defaults: #1468. Reset: #1477.

Detailed Description

Matching

For each pair of neighbouring processed captures in a session, every pair of valid detections gets a cost:

cost = overlap_weight * (1 - IoU) + size_weight * (1 - smaller area / larger area) + distance_weight * (centre distance / image diagonal)

A pair is a candidate when it passes every enabled limit and its cost is below the cutoff. Candidates are taken lowest cost first, and each detection is linked at most once in each direction; a detection that already links on, or is already linked to, is not a candidate. A capture without recorded dimensions is not compared with the next one. Each run ends with a one-line "Result" on the job saying how many sessions were tracked, previewed, skipped or failed.

Write phase on the busiest session (measured)

Measured on the busiest session in a copy of production data (14,366 detections over 663 captures), with its real boxes, capture times and grouping loaded into a test database whose detection and occurrence tables were padded to the copy's size (about 630,000 and 610,000 rows). Default settings; the run makes 10,777 links and takes the session from 13,930 to 3,589 occurrences.

	Before this round	After
Write phase	37.3 s	10.5 s
Transaction (locks held)	38.1 s	11.6 s
Statements in the write phase	more than 9,000 (Django's query log stopped counting)	about 6,050

Nearly all remaining statements are the determination recompute, two lookups per changed occurrence (1,976 here). This was a single measurement on a developer machine, not a controlled benchmark. The new freshness guard and the regroup gate both use the new unique index: under 0.02 ms with no links in the table, about 5 ms with this session's links, where the old guard took a 204 ms sequential scan of the copy's detection table.

Decisions made in review (owner, 5 Oct)

• No tracking classification. An earlier version wrote a copy of the winning classification when a merge changed the determination. The original stayed final, so the copy was an extra vote that class masking could not remove. Tracking now only groups detections; the determination comes from the classifications as before, and the result records the change.
• Statistics live in the result snapshot. Sorting by movement uses the result's indexed value. Sorting by label disagreement, or slower statistics, will be measured on a large project when the sorting UI is built, and may live on an opt-in explore page.
• No dedicated export. The detections export in Feat: detections csv export #1395 is the natural place for each detection's link and occurrence.

Deferred, and where it lives

• Revive occurrence tracking as a post-processing task, behind a per-project opt-in flag #1272 remains the source for the parts not ported here; Review and correct occurrence tracks in the interface, behind the tracking flag #1432 the review UI; Create and configure any job from the interface #1458 / Create any job from one dialog generated from each job type's own settings model, & simplify the job creation API #1447 starting tracking from the jobs API and the job panel; Store feature vectors from any model for every detection, indexed for the ways they are read #1462 vector storage, after which the appearance term returns; Calibrate tracking's default settings from experiments on real nights #1468 recommended defaults.
• Also out of scope: a per-project feature flag, occurrence editing, confirmation of occurrences, the species and activity cost terms, and the evaluation command.
• Follow-up tickets: Reset tracking on a session so runs with different settings can be compared #1477 resetting tracking on a session (the grouping it needs is now recorded on each result), and Choose a merged occurrence's determination by a vote across its detections #1478 choosing a merged occurrence's determination by a vote (today a single high-scoring detection decides it).

Known limitations

• The defaults are not calibrated. In the busiest session of the production copy, processed captures are 60 s apart (at most 120 s; the independent review found up to 600 s in another session), while the help text describes captures about 20 s apart, and the time limit is off by default. At the defaults, the busiest session goes from 13,930 occurrences to 3,589. Use "Preview only" before a real run until Calibrate tracking's default settings from experiments on real nights #1468 settles the defaults.
• A run cannot be undone inside Antenna yet. Each result records what a reset (Reset tracking on a session so runs with different settings can be compared #1477) needs, but nothing reads it so far. Results that move from a merged occurrence onto the kept one are not recorded.
• Re-running tracking on a session only adds links and merges. It does not split occurrences an earlier run merged.
• An identification saved during a run on an occurrence the run merges away waits for the run to commit (10.7 s in the measurement above) and then fails because the occurrence no longer exists. Before, it was saved and then moved; now it is never lost silently, but the person gets an error and saves it again on the merged occurrence.
• The freshness guard reads the linked detections of the whole table when a session has none, so its cost grows with how much has been tracked across all projects (about 5 ms for 10,777 links).
• After a regroup splits an occurrence, its tracking result stays on the earliest piece with the figures of the whole run.

How to Test the Changes

Automated: the full backend suite passes in a CI-like compose stack (872 tests, 2 skipped), makemigrations --check reports no changes, and UI lint, type check and the history tests pass. New tests cover the settings schema, the cost function and each limit, the time limit (without a database), the merge plan (without a database), processed-only ordering and captures without a timestamp, chains stopping at session boundaries, whole-occurrence merges, identifications and results moving on merge with duplicates withdrawn, the grouping recorded for a reset, the result figures, class masking after tracking, both guards (including a session grouped earlier without links), the preview, one detector per session, progress saved between comparisons within a session, a failing session, the capture-set scope, the regroup split and its gate, query counts that grow with captures and occurrences but not with detections, and the admin form.

Manual, on a demo project (create_demo_project):

1. Reset one session so each detection has its own occurrence, and give one detection a high-scoring classification of a different species.
2. Django admin → Events → select the session → "Run Occurrence tracking on the selected sessions (async)". Set the maximum time between captures to 3600 seconds.
3. The job succeeded and recorded a result for each linked occurrence. One occurrence's determination changed from one species to another, recorded in its result, with no tracking classification written. The occurrence history shows the card below, with each setting labelled by its title from the settings form.

The manual run predates this review round; the benchmark above ran the new write phase.

Screenshots

The admin form, with the defaults (taken before the "Detector" and "Preview only" settings were added):

The tracking card in an occurrence's history (demo data):

Deployment Notes

• Migrations: main/0100_detection_next_detection adds a nullable column (metadata only). main/0101_detection_next_detection_constraints is non-atomic: it builds the unique index concurrently, attaches it as the unique constraint, adds the foreign key as NOT VALID, then validates it. Reads and writes on the detection table continue during the index build and the validation; adding the column, attaching the unique constraint and adding the unvalidated foreign key each take a brief strong lock, and give up after 10 s rather than queue behind a long query. If the concurrent index build is interrupted, or a lock times out after it, the index of the same name must be dropped before the migration is retried.
• Migration numbers follow Record any algorithm's results on occurrences in a standard way, and show them in each occurrence's history #1461 (main/0098, main/0099). If another PR takes main/0100 first, these are renumbered.
• No backfill. Tracking runs only when an admin starts it. The regroup split runs during every regroup, but returns after one indexed query unless the sessions have tracking links.

Checklist

• I have tested these changes appropriately.
• I have added and/or modified relevant tests.
• I updated relevant documentation or comments.
• I have verified that this PR follows the project's coding standards.
• Any dependent changes have already been merged to main. (Record any algorithm's results on occurrences in a standard way, and show them in each occurrence's history #1461 merges first.)

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change adds configurable detection tracking across processed captures. It adds session-aware occurrence updates, tracking actions in the admin, persisted tracking results, and tracking statistics in the occurrence-history UI.

Changes

Occurrence Tracking

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Tracking configuration and matching ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/config.py, ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/matching.py, ami/main/models.py, ami/main/migrations/*, ami/ml/models/algorithm_result.py, ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_matching.py	Adds tracking scopes, matching weights and limits, pair-cost and link-selection rules, a detection self-reference with database constraints, and the tracking result kind.
Session tracking and occurrence updates ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/task.py, ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/__init__.py, ami/ml/post_processing/registry.py, ami/main/models.py, ami/main/tasks.py, ami/tests/fixtures/tracking.py, ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_task.py	Adds session planning and link writing, folds linked detections into occurrences, records results, refreshes calculated fields, and reports progress and session failures.
Session-boundary occurrence splitting ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/sessions.py, ami/main/models.py, ami/main/tests.py	Regrouping now splits occurrences that span sessions. New pieces receive copied identifications, and their determinations are recomputed.
Admin tracking actions ami/main/admin.py, ami/ml/post_processing/admin/*, ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_admin.py	Adds schema-backed tracking forms and admin actions for selected events and capture sets. Event selections create jobs grouped by project.
Tracking metrics and result display ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/stats.py, ami/ml/results/schemas.py, ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_stats.py, ui/src/data-services/models/occurrence-history*, ui/src/pages/occurrence-details/identification-card/algorithm-result.tsx, ui/src/utils/language.ts	Adds tracking figures and result data, accepts tracking entries in occurrence history, and displays tracking statistics and labels in the UI.

Priority: ➖ Normal

Estimated code review effort: 4 (Complex) | ~60 minutes

Change: Feature

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant TrackingTask
  participant plan_session_links
  participant write_session_plan
  participant Detection
  participant Occurrence
  participant update_calculated_fields_for_sessions_and_stations
  TrackingTask->>plan_session_links: Build session link proposals
  TrackingTask->>write_session_plan: Write a current session plan
  write_session_plan->>Detection: Save next_detection links
  write_session_plan->>Occurrence: Fold detection chains into occurrences
  TrackingTask->>update_calculated_fields_for_sessions_and_stations: Refresh event and deployment counts

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Merge Risk: 🟡 Moderate · up to 6ce5d

Tracking is normally safe. But if an operator turns off the "only track sessions that have not been tracked" guard and runs tracking again, some detections can lose their occurrence. They then disappear from occurrence views and counts. Fix this before merging, or keep that guard always on.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 34.06% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 138 functions across 28 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely identifies the main change: running automated tracking from the admin with editable settings.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description covers the required template sections. It explains the changes, related issues, testing, screenshots, deployment steps, known limitations, and checklist status.

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[mihow]

Claude says: #1471 merges first, then #1461, so two things to plan for when rebasing this PR.

Migrations. #1471 takes main/0096 and main/0097, and #1461 will follow them, so this PR's 0096_detection_next_detection and 0097_occurrence_track_stats need renumbering after both.

next_detection locks main_detection while its index builds. OneToOneField adds a unique index, and Django builds it in the same transaction as the ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN, so reads and writes on the detection table wait for the whole build. #1471 measured this for a plain index on a new all-null column of the detection table: about 160 ms on a local copy of production data, and production is larger. That is short, but deploys also queue behind any long-running query on the table. For a non-unique foreign key, the fix in #1471 is db_index=False plus a partial index built with AddIndexConcurrently. A unique index is harder to build concurrently without confusing Django's migration state, so measuring the build with sqlmigrate and a rolled-back transaction on the local copy is probably the right first step before choosing.

"View occurrences" for tracking jobs. The job page's "View occurrences" link (from #1471) matches occurrences whose detections or classifications the job created. Tracking creates neither, so the link opens an empty list for a tracking job until tracking writes algorithm results with its job (#1461) and the filter gains a branch for them, which is described on #1461.

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Review comments at @ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/task.py:
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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 6781705 and 6ce5d0d.

📒 Files selected for processing (28)

• ami/main/admin.py
• ami/main/migrations/0100_detection_next_detection.py
• ami/main/migrations/0101_detection_next_detection_constraints.py
• ami/main/models.py
• ami/main/tasks.py
• ami/main/tests.py
• ami/ml/models/algorithm_result.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/__init__.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/admin/forms.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/admin/tracking_actions.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/admin/tracking_form.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/registry.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_admin.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_matching.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_stats.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tests/test_tracking_task.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/__init__.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/config.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/matching.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/sessions.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/stats.py
• ami/ml/post_processing/tracking/task.py
• ami/ml/results/schemas.py
• ami/tests/fixtures/tracking.py
• ui/src/data-services/models/occurrence-history.test.ts
• ui/src/data-services/models/occurrence-history.ts
• ui/src/pages/occurrence-details/identification-card/algorithm-result.tsx
• ui/src/utils/language.ts

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[mihow]

Claude says: The merge order and plan for tracking, agreed with the owner today, are on #1412: #1412 (comment)

This PR's place: second, right after #1461. It is already rebased onto #1461's latest head and retargets to main once #1461 merges.