goplaces

What This Skill Does

The goplaces skill provides a powerful command-line interface for interacting with the Google Places API (New). It acts as an bridge between your AI agent and the world's most comprehensive location database. Whether you need to find highly-rated coffee shops in a new city, resolve vague location strings into precise geographic identifiers, or fetch granular business details like operating hours and customer reviews, this tool streamlines the process. By supporting both human-readable output and machine-friendly JSON, it serves both ad-hoc queries and complex data automation pipelines.

Installation

You can install the goplaces binary via Homebrew by running brew install steipete/tap/goplaces. For OpenClaw users, ensure the skill is registered by executing clawhub install openclaw/openclaw/skills/goplaces. Once installed, ensure your environment variable GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY is set, as this is mandatory for all API requests.

Use Cases

This skill is perfect for location-aware task management and travel planning. Use it to build itineraries based on proximity, verify business address accuracy for logistics, or scrape reviews for sentiment analysis. Developers can leverage the JSON output mode to integrate real-world place data directly into web applications or custom reporting scripts, bypassing the need for manual browser interactions.

Example Prompts

1. "Search for sushi restaurants in Tokyo with a rating of at least 4.5 and output the results in JSON format."
2. "Find the place details for the Louvre Museum using its place ID and include the latest customer reviews."
3. "Look for cafes open right now near my current coordinates at 40.7128 latitude and -74.0060 longitude within a 2-kilometer radius."

Tips & Limitations

Note that the Google Places API is subject to usage costs; monitor your API billing to avoid unexpected charges. When filtering by type, remember that the API only accepts a single value per request. If you encounter terminal formatting issues, you can disable ANSI color output by using the --no-color flag or setting the NO_COLOR environment variable. For advanced debugging, use the GOOGLE_PLACES_BASE_URL to route requests through a proxy.