refactor(vizx): rebrand the visualization module to VizX

.github/actions/pyrx_build/action.yml

@@ -64,5 +64,5 @@ runs:
         # dirs via test/conftest.py collect_ignore). Every light test dir must be
         # listed: pyrx, ds, pyvx, pygx (light GridX), pmtiles_light (light
         # pmtiles_agg), stac (light STAC client, [stac] extra),
-        # viz (gbx.viz, [viz] extra). See test/conftest.py for the maintained condition.
-        pytest test/pyrx test/ds test/pyvx test/pygx test/pmtiles_light test/stac test/viz -m "not integration" -v
+        # vizx (gbx.vizx, [vizx] extra). See test/conftest.py for the maintained condition.
+        pytest test/pyrx test/ds test/pyvx test/pygx test/pmtiles_light test/stac test/vizx -m "not integration" -v

docs/docs/api/overview.mdx

@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ import packagesExamples from '!!raw-loader!../../tests/python/packages/examples.
 import RasterXIcon from '../../../resources/images/RasterX.png';
 import GridXIcon from '../../../resources/images/GridX.png';
 import VectorXIcon from '../../../resources/images/VectorX.png';
+import VizXIcon from '../../../resources/images/VizX.png';
 
 # Functions Overview
 
@@ -63,6 +64,17 @@ Augments Databricks built-in `ST_*` functions with vector-tile encoding, TIN sur
 
 ---
 
+### <img src={VizXIcon} alt="VizX" style={{height: '88px', width: 'auto', verticalAlign: 'middle'}} /> {#vizx}
+
+Tier-agnostic visualization helpers for inspecting GeoBrix outputs in a notebook — Python-only, no SQL functions.
+
+- Raster plotting (`plot_raster` / `plot_file`) with auto-decimation and percentile stretch, including coverage-depth and mask-layer composites for multi-band presence stacks
+- Spark DataFrame → GeoPandas adapters (`as_gdf` / `cells_as_gdf` / `grid_as_gdf`) for `.plot()` / `.explore()` maps
+
+[VizX Reference →](./vizx)
+
+---
+
 ### PMTiles
 
 Container format for serving raster (PNG / JPEG / WebP) or vector (MVT) tile pyramids from a single static file via HTTP range requests. Native Scala v3 encoder — no GDAL/OGR dependency.
@@ -76,13 +88,13 @@ Container format for serving raster (PNG / JPEG / WebP) or vector (MVT) tile pyr
 
 ## Package Comparison
 
-| Feature | RasterX | GridX | VectorX | PMTiles |
-|---------|---------|-------|---------|---------|
-| **Primary Use** | Raster processing | Discrete global grids | Vector encoding + legacy | Tile pyramid packaging |
-| **Product Gap** | Full gap-filling | Specialized grids (BNG, quadbin) | Vector-tile encoding, legacy migration | Net-new |
-| **GDAL Required** | Yes | No | Yes (readers + MVT) | No |
-| **Output Format** | Tile (struct) + arrays | Cell IDs (Long / String) + WKB | BINARY (MVT bytes), WKB | BINARY (PMTile blob) or file |
-| **Spark Surface** | 65+ SQL functions | 30+ SQL functions | 6+ SQL functions + DataSources | 1 UDAF + 1 DataSource |
+| Feature | RasterX | GridX | VectorX | PMTiles | VizX |
+|---------|---------|-------|---------|---------|------|
+| **Primary Use** | Raster processing | Discrete global grids | Vector encoding + legacy | Tile pyramid packaging | Notebook visualization |
+| **Product Gap** | Full gap-filling | Specialized grids (BNG, quadbin) | Vector-tile encoding, legacy migration | Net-new | Supporting layer |
+| **GDAL Required** | Yes | No | Yes (readers + MVT) | No | No |
+| **Output Format** | Tile (struct) + arrays | Cell IDs (Long / String) + WKB | BINARY (MVT bytes), WKB | BINARY (PMTile blob) or file | Matplotlib figure / GeoDataFrame |
+| **Spark Surface** | 65+ SQL functions | 30+ SQL functions | 6+ SQL functions + DataSources | 1 UDAF + 1 DataSource | Python only (no SQL) |
 
 ## Choosing the Right Package
 
@@ -94,6 +106,8 @@ Container format for serving raster (PNG / JPEG / WebP) or vector (MVT) tile pyr
 
 **Use PMTiles when:** publishing a tile pyramid (raster or vector) as a single static file; serving from S3/ABFS/GCS without a tile server; aggregating `(z, x, y, bytes)` rows into a deployable map.
 
+**Use VizX when:** inspecting GeoBrix raster tiles or files in a notebook (single-band, RGB, coverage-depth, or mask-layer composites); turning Spark geometry / H3-cell / gridspec DataFrames into GeoPandas for `.plot()` / `.explore()` maps. VizX is a Python-only supporting layer for visualization, not a spatial-processing package.
+
 ## Function Naming Convention
 
 All GeoBrix SQL functions use the `gbx_` prefix:

docs/docs/api/raster-functions.mdx

@@ -785,7 +785,7 @@ GROUP BY region_id
 Streaming aggregator that burns H3 cell centroid pixels (or spatial-envelope pixels) into one raster tile per group. This is the **inverse** of [`rst_h3_rastertogrid*`](#rst_h3_rastertogridavg): where those functions reduce raster pixels to per-cell statistics, `rst_h3_rasterize_agg` reconstructs a raster from per-cell values. Use [`rst_frombands_agg`](#rst_frombands_agg) to stack per-threshold rasters (each produced by one `rst_h3_rasterize_agg` call) into a single multi-band output.
 
 :::tip Worked example
-The [H3 Rasterize notebook](../notebooks/h3-rasterize) walks this through end to end on a San Francisco Bay Area DEM: elevation isobands → H3 polyfill → a shared canvas from [`rst_h3_gridspec`](#h3-grid) → per-band `rst_h3_rasterize_agg` → multi-band stack via [`rst_frombands_agg`](#rst_frombands_agg), visualized with the [`gbx.viz`](./viz) helpers. The same pattern maps directly to a telco multi-threshold signal-coverage stack.
+The [H3 Rasterize notebook](../notebooks/h3-rasterize) walks this through end to end on a San Francisco Bay Area DEM: elevation isobands → H3 polyfill → a shared canvas from [`rst_h3_gridspec`](#h3-grid) → per-band `rst_h3_rasterize_agg` → multi-band stack via [`rst_frombands_agg`](#rst_frombands_agg), visualized with the [`gbx.vizx`](./vizx) helpers. The same pattern maps directly to a telco multi-threshold signal-coverage stack.
 :::
 
 **Signature:** `rst_h3_rasterize_agg(cellid: Column, value: Column, srid: Column, pixel_size: Column, xmin: Column, ymin: Column, xmax: Column, ymax: Column, width: Column, height: Column, mode: Column, kring_pad: Column): Column`
@@ -2038,7 +2038,7 @@ df.select(
 
 Apply your own function to each tile's open rasterio dataset, returning one scalar per row. `fn` receives a rasterio `DatasetReader`; the return value must match `returnType` (default `DoubleType()`; any Spark `DataType`). A null/empty tile yields null. This is the "GeoBrix doesn't have function X — run my own rasterio per tile" path; it returns a scalar (raster→raster transforms are the domain of `rst_mapalgebra` / `rst_derivedband`).
 
-For rendering tiles and building maps from results, see the [Visualization (`gbx.viz`)](./viz) page.
+For rendering tiles and building maps from results, see the [Visualization (`gbx.vizx`)](./vizx) page.
 
 ---
 

docs/docs/api/viz.mdx → docs/docs/api/vizx.mdx

@@ -1,34 +1,36 @@
 ---
 sidebar_position: 11
-title: Visualization (gbx.viz)
+title: VizX Function Reference
 ---
 
-# Visualization (`gbx.viz`)
+import VizXIcon from '../../../resources/images/VizX.png';
 
-`databricks.labs.gbx.viz` renders rasters and turns Spark DataFrames into GeoDataFrames for interactive maps. It is **tier-agnostic** — the raster plotters take tile bytes (use them with `pyrx` *or* `rasterx` tiles), and the vector adapters take any Spark DataFrame.
+# <img src={VizXIcon} alt="VizX" style={{height: '3em', width: 'auto', verticalAlign: 'middle', marginRight: '0.5rem'}} /> Function Reference
+
+`databricks.labs.gbx.vizx` renders rasters and turns Spark DataFrames into GeoDataFrames for interactive maps. It is **tier-agnostic** — the raster plotters take tile bytes (use them with `pyrx` *or* `rasterx` tiles), and the vector adapters take any Spark DataFrame.
 
 These are driver-side, single-node helpers for inspecting results in a notebook — not distributed operations. They collect to the driver, so the vector adapters guard the collect with `max_rows`.
 
 :::note Opt-in extra
-`gbx.viz` requires `geobrix[viz]`, which pulls in `matplotlib`, `geopandas`, `folium`, and `mapclassify`. The package itself imports only `matplotlib` (raster rendering) and `geopandas` (the GeoDataFrame adapters); `folium` + `mapclassify` are used by `GeoDataFrame.explore()` for interactive maps.
+`gbx.vizx` requires `geobrix[vizx]`, which pulls in `matplotlib`, `geopandas`, `folium`, and `mapclassify`. The package itself imports only `matplotlib` (raster rendering) and `geopandas` (the GeoDataFrame adapters); `folium` + `mapclassify` are used by `GeoDataFrame.explore()` for interactive maps.
 :::
 
 ## Installation
 
 ```bash
-pip install "geobrix[viz]"
+pip install "geobrix[vizx]"
 ```
 
 From a Databricks notebook (commonly alongside the lightweight tier):
 
 ```python
-%pip install --quiet "geobrix[light,viz] @ file:///Volumes/<catalog>/<schema>/<volume>/geobrix-0.4.0-py3-none-any.whl"
+%pip install --quiet "geobrix[light,vizx] @ file:///Volumes/<catalog>/<schema>/<volume>/geobrix-0.4.0-py3-none-any.whl"
 ```
 
 ## Import
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import (
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import (
     plot_raster,
     plot_file,
     plot_mask_layers,
@@ -60,7 +62,7 @@ plot_raster(raster_bytes, *, fig_w=10, fig_h=10, max_pixels=2000, composite="aut
 Render a raster from its in-memory bytes — e.g. a tile's `raster` field collected from a GeoBrix DataFrame:
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import plot_raster
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import plot_raster
 
 row = df.select("tile").first()
 plot_raster(row["tile"]["raster"])
@@ -75,10 +77,10 @@ plot_raster(row["tile"]["raster"], composite="depth")
 plot_file(path, *, fig_w=10, fig_h=10, max_pixels=2000, composite="auto")
 ```
 
-Render a raster from disk (GeoTIFF, VRT, …) with the same decimation + stretch pipeline:
+Render a raster from disk (GeoTIFF, VRT, …) with the same decimation + stretch pipeline. A leading `dbfs:` or `file:` scheme is stripped automatically, so scheme-qualified Databricks paths (`dbfs:/Volumes/…`, `file:///Volumes/…`) work as well as the bare FUSE path:
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import plot_file
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import plot_file
 
 plot_file("/Volumes/main/geobrix_samples/geobrix-examples/nyc/dem.tif")
 
@@ -108,7 +110,7 @@ Overlay several single-band presence-mask tiles on one axes, each drawn as a sol
 All tiles must share the same grid and extent — for example, produced on a shared canvas via [`rst_h3_gridspec`](./raster-functions#h3-grid). Layers are drawn in order: pass the largest footprint first and the smallest last so nested coverage remains visible.
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import plot_mask_layers
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import plot_mask_layers
 
 # Each raster is a single-band H3 presence mask for a different threshold.
 # Tiles share the same canvas (same gridspec extent).
@@ -137,10 +139,10 @@ as_gdf(df, wkt_col="wkt", *, max_rows=10_000)
 Convert a Spark DataFrame with a WKT geometry column into a `geopandas.GeoDataFrame`. Non-geometry columns are preserved; the WKT column is replaced by the geometry:
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import as_gdf
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import as_gdf
 
 gdf = as_gdf(df_with_wkt, wkt_col="wkt")
-gdf.explore()   # interactive folium map (needs the [viz] extra)
+gdf.explore()   # interactive folium map (needs the [vizx] extra)
 ```
 
 ### `cells_as_gdf`
@@ -164,11 +166,11 @@ Convert a DataFrame of H3 cell ids into a `GeoDataFrame` of cell-boundary polygo
 Without `dissolve_by`, each row represents one cell (useful for per-cell tooltips in `.explore()`). With `dissolve_by`, rows are merged per group into a single union footprint — far fewer geometries for large cell sets:
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import cells_as_gdf
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import cells_as_gdf
 
 # Per-cell choropleth:
 gdf = cells_as_gdf(df_cells, cell_col="cellid", extra_cols=["count"])
-gdf.explore(column="count")   # choropleth (needs mapclassify, bundled in [viz])
+gdf.explore(column="count")   # choropleth (needs mapclassify, bundled in [vizx])
 
 # Dissolve to one footprint polygon per category:
 gdf_dissolved = cells_as_gdf(
@@ -198,7 +200,7 @@ Convert a grid spec — as returned by [`rst_h3_gridspec`](./raster-functions#h3
 Optional metadata fields `pixel_size`, `width`, and `height` are carried through if present on the input.
 
 ```python
-from databricks.labs.gbx.viz import cells_as_gdf, grid_as_gdf
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import cells_as_gdf, grid_as_gdf
 
 # grid_row is the 'grid' field from an rst_h3_gridspec result
 grid_gdf = grid_as_gdf(grid_row)
@@ -211,6 +213,63 @@ grid_gdf.explore(m=m, color="black", style_kwds={"fill": False})
 
 See the [H3 rasterize notebook](../notebooks/h3-rasterize) for a worked example pairing `grid_as_gdf` with `cells_as_gdf` to build a shared-canvas overlay.
 
+## Static maps
+
+`plot_static` renders Spark- or GeoPandas-derived geometries (or H3 cells) over
+a basemap as a **static** matplotlib figure — the GitHub-renderable counterpart
+to `GeoDataFrame.explore()` (whose Leaflet/folium output renders a blank
+*"Make this Notebook Trusted"* placeholder on GitHub and the docs site).
+
+The basemap is fetched from a web tile server (via `contextily`) **at execution
+time** and rasterized into the figure, so it bakes into the committed notebook
+output PNG — GitHub then displays it with no network. If the executing
+environment has no egress, the map renders without a basemap and a warning is
+emitted (never a hard error).
+
+### `plot_static`
+
+```python
+plot_static(
+    data, *, geom_col=None, grid_system=None, column=None, cmap="viridis",
+    legend=True, basemap=True, basemap_source=None, alpha=0.8, edgecolor="face",
+    fill=True, markersize=None, title=None, fig_w=10, fig_h=10, max_rows=10_000,
+    srid=None, ax=None,
+)
+```
+
+`data` is a Spark DataFrame **or** a `geopandas.GeoDataFrame`. Returns the
+matplotlib `Axes`; pass it back via `ax=` to overlay layers on one map. Every
+layer is reprojected to Web Mercator (EPSG:3857), so a `basemap=False` overlay
+lines up with a basemap layer on the same axes. `plot_static` does **not** call
+`pyplot.show()` — in a notebook the figure auto-displays at cell end with all
+overlaid layers; a script can call `plt.show()` itself. Pass `fill=False` to
+draw geometries as outlines only (no face), so a boundary doesn't cover the
+layers beneath it.
+
+**Geometry columns** accept the same encodings as every other `gbx_st_*`
+function — WKT, EWKT, WKB, EWKB, and native `GEOMETRY` / `GEOGRAPHY` (coerced
+in-Spark via `st_asbinary`). Set **`grid_system`** to treat the column as DGGS
+cell ids instead:
+
+| `grid_system` | Behaviour |
+|---|---|
+| `None` (default) | Column is a geometry encoding (WKT/EWKT/WKB/EWKB/`GEOMETRY`/`GEOGRAPHY`). |
+| `'h3'` | Column holds H3 cell ids (string index **or** bigint); rendered as cell-boundary polygons. |
+| `'quadbin'`, `'bng'`, `'custom'` | Planned — currently raise `NotImplementedError`. |
+
+```python
+from databricks.labs.gbx.vizx import plot_static
+
+# H3 choropleth over a basemap, then overlay the shared-canvas boundary as a
+# red outline (fill=False so it doesn't cover the cells; basemap=False so it
+# doesn't re-fetch tiles). Both layers reproject to 3857, so they align.
+ax = plot_static(cells_df, grid_system="h3", column="count", title="Coverage")
+plot_static(grid_gdf, ax=ax, fill=False, edgecolor="red", basemap=False)
+```
+
+`basemap_source` overrides the default `contextily.providers.CartoDB.Positron`;
+`basemap=False` skips tiles entirely (deterministic, no network).
+
 ## Escape hatches
 
 When you need raster math that isn't in the `rst_*` surface, drop down to NumPy / rasterio per tile with the [pyrx escape hatches](./raster-functions#escape-hatches) (`tile_to_numpy`, `rst_apply`).