spots

What This Skill Does

The spots skill is a powerful, grid-based search tool designed to bypass the limitations of the standard Google Places API. While standard searches often prioritize popular or sponsored locations, spots utilizes an exhaustive scanning methodology by breaking down a search radius into smaller, manageable coordinate segments. This ensures that you find every single location matching your criteria, effectively uncovering 'hidden gems' that Google’s default algorithm might filter out or deprioritize. Whether you are looking for a specific type of café or building a comprehensive directory of services in a neighborhood, this tool provides the raw data precision required for high-quality location scouting.

Installation

To integrate spots into your OpenClaw environment, run clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/foeken/spots. Ensure you have your Google Cloud Platform credentials ready. You will need a valid Google API key with the 'Places API' and 'Geocoding API' enabled. You can configure this by running spots setup within your terminal, which will guide you through storing your credentials. If you prefer manual setup, simply export your key using export GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY="your_key_here". This skill is also available via Go for standalone usage: go install github.com/foeken/spots@latest.

Use Cases

• Urban Exploration & Travel: Find the best-rated brunch spots in a new city that aren't just the top three sponsored results.
• Market Research: Gather exhaustive lists of competitor businesses within a specific radius for local market analysis.
• Data Visualization: Export location data directly into map formats (HTML) to visualize clusters of specific business types.
• Business Prospecting: Identify businesses in a specific area that lack a high review count, offering opportunities for marketing services.

Example Prompts

1. "Use spots to find all coffee shops in Utrecht city center with a rating of at least 4.5 and output the results as a JSON file."
2. "I need a map of all bakeries within a 500-meter radius of the central station coordinates 51.9817, 5.9093. Export this as an interactive map."
3. "Can you retrieve the detailed review data for 'The Breakfast Club' in Amsterdam using the spots tool?"

Tips & Limitations

• API Costs: Because spots performs exhaustive, grid-based scanning, it makes significantly more API calls than a standard query. Monitor your Google Cloud billing to avoid unexpected costs.
• Radius Constraints: While you can set a large radius, it is highly recommended to start with smaller search windows (500m-1000m) to maintain accuracy and prevent excessive data retrieval times.
• Data Filtering: Always leverage the --min-rating and --min-reviews flags to filter out low-quality data during the collection process, saving you time in post-processing.