goplaces

What This Skill Does

The goplaces skill is a specialized interface for the modern Google Places API (New), providing a clean, terminal-friendly way to interact with location data. It functions as an abstraction layer over complex API requests, allowing you to perform text-based searches, resolve locations, and retrieve detailed business information—including reviews and ratings—directly from your command line. By supporting both human-readable output and machine-parseable JSON, it is equally effective for quick reconnaissance or programmatic data pipelines within your OpenClaw workflows.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, use the OpenClaw management CLI: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/steipete/goplaces

Additionally, ensure you have the underlying CLI tool installed on your system. For macOS users, this can be done via Homebrew: brew install steipete/tap/goplaces

Finally, ensure your API key is correctly configured by exporting the GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY environment variable in your shell profile.

Use Cases

The goplaces skill is ideal for location-aware automation. You can use it to build dynamic travel itineraries, generate automated reports on local businesses based on rating thresholds, or filter establishments by specific criteria such as 'open now' status or price tiers. It is particularly useful for developers who need to integrate real-world geographical data into their local scripts without writing boilerplate HTTP client code.

Example Prompts

1. "Search for vegetarian-friendly restaurants in downtown Chicago that are currently open and have a rating of at least 4.5."
2. "Get the full details and the latest reviews for the place with ID 'ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsRUsoyG83frY4' using goplaces."
3. "Find the top 3 highly-rated coffee shops near coordinates 40.7128, -74.0060 within a 2-kilometer radius and output the data in JSON format."

Tips & Limitations

To keep your output clean, leverage the --no-color flag or set the NO_COLOR environment variable if you are piping results into logs or other text-processing tools. Note that the Google Places API (New) only accepts a single type filter per request, so be precise with your parameters. Price levels are represented on a scale of 0 to 4. For advanced operations, use the --page-token parameter to handle large datasets effectively. Always be mindful of your API usage costs, as excessive requests will impact your Google Cloud billing.