Quick start
·
Tools
·
Reference
·
Benchmarks
·
Website
**PlaceRoot grounds AI agents in open map data.** It's an MCP server that answers spatial questions — what's nearby, what's in this neighborhood, how do I get there — from [Overture Maps](https://overturemaps.org) open data. No API key, no signup, no vendor platform.
An independent project by [vibemapper](https://vibemapper.dev).
- 🎯 **Answers, not data dumps.** Every tool returns compact, ranked results sized for an agent's context window — never a raw GeoJSON dump.
- 🗺️ **Real routing, zero keys.** `route` and `isochrone` walk an actual street graph built from Overture's transportation segments — not a straight-line guess — anywhere on Earth.
- 🚶 **Reachability-filtered search.** `find_places(..., within={"minutes": 15, "mode": "walk"})` keeps only results truly inside the street-graph walk/cycle/driveshed — not a radius that guesses at it, and not a second call to intersect a polygon yourself.
- 🏙️ **Rich, filterable place data.** Category, brand, confidence, operating status, contactability — sourced from Overture's open dataset (contributed by Meta, Uber, TomTom, and others).
- 📐 **Boundary-accurate.** Search inside a named place's real administrative polygon, not a guessed radius circle.
- ⚡ **Zero setup.** Reads Overture's public data directly — no key, no database, nothing to install beyond the server itself.
## Quick start
Run it straight from PyPI or npm — no install step:
```bash
uvx placeroot # stdio MCP server
uvx placeroot --http # HTTP endpoint at http://127.0.0.1:8321/mcp
```
Add to Claude Code
```bash
claude mcp add placeroot -- uvx placeroot
```
Add to Claude Desktop
Add to your `claude_desktop_config.json`:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"placeroot": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["placeroot"]
}
}
}
```
Add to Cursor / other MCP clients
Same config as above wherever your client keeps its MCP server list. Prefer npm? Use `"command": "npx", "args": ["placeroot"]`.
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"placeroot": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["placeroot"]
}
}
}
```
Then ask your agent something spatial:
> *"What's around downtown Palo Alto?" · "Compare these two neighborhoods for a bike shop." · "Plan my errands: pharmacy, hardware store, post office."*
## What it can do
**48 tools**, grouped into four families — every answer fits in a couple of thousand tokens:
| Family | Tools | Answers questions like |
|---|---|---|
| 🔍 **Search & identify** | `find_places`, `find_near`, `geocode`, `reverse_geocode`, `place_details`, `search_categories`, `warmup_city`, … | What cafés are near this point? Coffee near the Eiffel Tower? |
| 📊 **Area analysis** | `summarize_area`, `compare_areas`, `neighborhood_verdict`, `summarize_buildings`, `land_use_at`, `transit_stops_near`, … | What's in this neighborhood, should I live here, and how does it differ from that one? |
| 🚴 **Routing** | `route`, `from_to`, `isochrone`, `optimize_route`, `places_along_route`, `distance_matrix`, `travel_time_matrix`, `map_match` | How far to walk from A to B? What's reachable in 15 minutes? Best order for 6 stops? Which streets did this GPS trace actually take? |
| 🗺️ **Geometry & maps** | `render_map`, `simplify_geometry` | Show me this result as an interactive map |
It also ships seven **workflow prompts** (site selection, neighborhood comparison, errand planning, should I live here, get to know my city, verify listing claims, plan area visit) and three attachable **resources** — and a `PLACEROOT_TOOLS` setting to load only the tool profiles you need, cutting schema overhead by up to 95%.
📚 **[Full tool catalog, prompts, resources & configuration → docs/REFERENCE.md](docs/REFERENCE.md)**
> [!NOTE]
> Open data has honest limits: no live traffic, no opening hours, no ratings or photos — [what PlaceRoot deliberately doesn't do](docs/REFERENCE.md#what-it-deliberately-does-not-do). For everything else about where things are and what's reachable from them, it answers without a key.
## Why PlaceRoot
It's the only keyless MCP server doing real graph routing over global open map data — with every tool declaring proper [MCP annotations](docs/REFERENCE.md#tool-annotations-and-listing-cache-hints) so clients know which calls are read-only before prompting you. Stable [GERS ids](https://docs.overturemaps.org/gers/) let agents hold onto places across turns; local caching makes repeat queries answer in milliseconds and keeps working offline; and the whole thing is [self-hostable end to end](docs/MIRROR.md).
How it stacks up against Mapbox MCP and Google Maps MCP: [head-to-head benchmarks](docs/benchmarks-vs.md) · [token-efficiency numbers](docs/benchmarks.md).
## Recreation places
Overture's places theme is derived from business listings, which makes it strong on businesses and thin on the places a family goes on a Saturday — playgrounds, neighbourhood parks, dog parks, beaches. Those features aren't missing from Overture, though; they're in a different theme. Overture's `base` theme is a direct conflation of OpenStreetMap, and PlaceRoot already queries it for `land_use_at` and `infrastructure_at`. The places tools read it too, by default.
Nothing is downloaded, built, or hosted — it's one more live scan of the same public Overture release, and it roughly **2.5x**es playground coverage (1,552 vs 674 across New York City in release `2026-07-22.0`, with 1,013 of them more than 150 m from any places-theme playground). Every places tool answers from both at once, with no other change: same tools, same response shape, same category filters.
The cost is a second dataset scan per places query (cached like everything else), and these rows carry no `confidence` or `operating_status` and are often unnamed — an unnamed playground comes back with `name: null` rather than being dropped. If you'd rather have the latency than the coverage:
```bash
export PLACEROOT_RECREATION_LAYER=0
```
`data_version` reports the layer whenever it's active. Full details, including why live Overpass queries and raw OSM Parquet were measured and rejected: [docs/RECREATION.md](docs/RECREATION.md).
## Development
```bash
uv sync # install dev dependencies
uv run pytest # offline test suite
uv run ruff check .
```
See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for dev setup, design rules, and how to propose a tool. Other docs: [CHANGELOG](CHANGELOG.md) · [SECURITY](SECURITY.md) · [publishing](docs/PUBLISHING.md) · [website](docs/WEBSITE.md) · [running a data mirror](docs/MIRROR.md) · [the recreation layer](docs/RECREATION.md)
## Contact
`hello@placeroot.dev`
Developed by [vibemapper](https://vibemapper.dev).
## Privacy Policy
PlaceRoot runs on your machine — no account, no API key, no sign-up. It has no telemetry and sends nothing to us; the only network traffic is your own queries going straight to Overture Maps' public data on AWS S3 (or a mirror you configure). Full details: [placeroot.dev/privacy.html](https://placeroot.dev/privacy.html).
## License and attribution
The code is [MIT](LICENSE). The data it queries is the Overture Maps public release, licensed per theme — places under CDLA-Permissive-2.0; the OSM-derived themes (divisions, transportation, base) under ODbL, which asks for attribution on anything user-facing you build from them:
> © Overture Maps Foundation · © OpenStreetMap contributors ([ODbL](https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/))
Per-theme obligations: [docs/DATA-LICENSE.md](docs/DATA-LICENSE.md).
mcp-name: io.github.chuofringer/placeroot
