placeroot
How it worksGitHub ↗Add to your AI — free

Ask about anywhere.
Get a real answer.

PlaceRoot gives any AI assistant real knowledge of the world around you — every shop, park, clinic, and café, from the same open map data that powers the big apps. Free, and nothing to sign up for.

Add to your AI — free
See it answer ↓
✓ No account✓ No API key✓ Open data
What's around downtown Palo Alto?
It's a great food-and-browsing area — 54 restaurants, 22 cafés, and 11 bookstores within a short walk. Most are along University Ave, so start there.
Answered from live open map data · just now

Whenever a place matters, PlaceRoot answers

Planning a trip

"A walkable food day in Lisbon — what's nearby?"

Choosing a neighborhood

"Compare two areas — groceries, transit, parks."

Running errands

"A hardware store on my route?"

Research & work

"What's the category mix in this district?"

This isn't another maps app.

Keep your maps app for driving. PlaceRoot answers.

MAPS APPS
Made for navigating
Accounts, ads, tracking
Closed platform — your AI can't see it
PLACEROOT
Made for answering
Completely free — no account, no ads
Open data, inside any AI you use
100% open source·100% open data·$0 forever
UNDER THE HOOD

Answers, not data dumps.

Most map tools hand an AI hundreds of kilobytes of raw GeoJSON. PlaceRoot returns compact, ranked answers — queried live from Overture Maps with DuckDB, no vendor in the middle.

one question, end to end
ASK
Is there a hardware store near the job site?
TOOL CALL
find_places(lat, lon, category="hardware_store")
DATA 
{ "name": "Stone Way Hardware",
  "distance_m": 210,
  "operating_status": "open",
  "confidence": 0.97 }  … 4 more, ranked
1.4 KB✓ budget ok
ANSWER
Yes — Stone Way Hardware, 210 m away and in business.
WHAT YOUR AI HAS TO READ
Typical map API dump482 KB
raw GeoJSON — overflows the context window
PlaceRoot answer≤ 2K tokens
~60× smaller — ranked, readable, ready to use
Small answers mean your AI actually reads them — and has room left to think.
FOR DEVELOPERS

One line. No keys. Fourteen tools.

github.com/chuofringer/placeroot ↗
1 · ADD — mcp_config.json
"mcpServers": {
  "placeroot": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["placeroot"] }
}
works in:Claude · ChatGPT · Gemini · Cursor · any MCP agent
2 · CALL — fourteen tools
find_places
nearest places: category, confidence, status
summarize_area
what's in an area: totals and category mix
compare_areas
2–5 areas side by side
within_distance
is the nearest match within N metres
place_details
one place in full: address, hours, links
admin_lookup
point → neighborhood, city, county, state
geocode
place names → coordinates
reverse_geocode
coordinates → nearest address
resolve_place
free text → a stable place id
summarize_buildings
building footprints & heights in an area
buildings_at
the buildings at a point
isochrone
walk / cycle / drive reach in N minutes
simplify_geometry
shrink a shape to a token budget
render_map
a self-contained HTML map of any answer
PlaceRoot · MIT licensed · built on Overture Maps open data free forever · no account · no API key