Skills

Install a skill once. After that, Claude already knows the setup, the usual mistakes, and a starter page. These came out of real builds on this site.

3D globe web maps with MapLibre GL

Globe Maps

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 7 KB

Teaches Claude to build spinning 3D globe maps, or turn a flat Leaflet map into one, with MapLibre.

  • Globe projection setup: projection, atmosphere, and light in a MapLibre v5 style
  • The gotchas: line densification, [lng, lat] order, style.load vs load, CSP worker/connect-src, vendoring, headless WebGL testing
  • Data-driven GeoJSON layers: category colors, selection dimming, filters, popups
  • A Leaflet-to-MapLibre porting table and a self-contained starter page
Client-side GIS in the browser

Turf Analysis

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 3 KB

Teaches Claude to measure, buffer, and cluster map data in the browser with Turf.js. No server.

  • The GeoJSON-in, GeoJSON-out pipeline: Turf computes, the map library draws
  • A pick-the-function table across measurement, transformation, joins, grids, and interpolation
  • Canonical patterns: buffer + spatial join, hexGrid + collect, Voronoi with bbox
  • The gotchas: [lng, lat] order, planar-ish math at planet scale, explicit units, caching heavy ops
Exact geodesy as 3D vectors

Spherical Geometry

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 11 KB

Teaches Claude exact earth-curve math for maps: shortest paths, constant-bearing lines, and circles that wrap the planet.

  • The discipline: compute as unit vectors, convert to lat/lon at the edge, split at ±180°
  • One-liner constructions: great circles as plane normals, midpoints, equidistant loci, antipodes
  • Curve sampling: great circles, small circles, loxodromes, isoazimuthals
  • The rendering pipeline: antimeridianSplit + polar clipping, plus the numerical edge cases
Maps under a strict Content-Security-Policy

Map CSP

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 3 KB

Teaches Claude to run Leaflet and MapLibre on a locked-down site, including the exact security headers each library needs.

  • A per-library directive table: tile hosts, MapLibre's blob: workers, fonts
  • The vendoring convention: self-hosted libraries with versioned, licensed READMEs
  • Cloudflare Pages _headers patterns: detach-first CSP overrides, forced downloads
  • A debugging checklist for blank maps and silently dead workers
Area maps that don't lie

Choropleth

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 3 KB

Teaches Claude to color regions by a number without lying. Projection, rates instead of raw counts, and honest no-data.

  • Projection-first: EPSG:5070 for the US, Equal Earth for the world, and why Mercator lies
  • Normalize, never map raw counts — and FIPS/GEOID as strings with zfill
  • Classification: quantiles vs Jenks, 5–7 classes, diverging ramps centered on meaning
  • MAUP, small-denominator instability, and honest no-data styling
ACS, TIGER, and GEOIDs decoded

Census Data

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 3 KB

Teaches Claude to pull US Census numbers and shapes the reliable way, then join them without dropping leading zeros.

  • API query anatomy: datasets, get/for/in, and decoding B19013_001E-style variable codes
  • The geography hierarchy with GEOID digit counts, from state to block group
  • TIGER/Line vs cartographic boundary files — and which one maps should use
  • Join hygiene: strings with leading zeros, vintage matching, sentinel values, MOEs
Getting features out of OpenStreetMap

Overpass OSM

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 3 KB

Teaches Claude to pull cafes, rail lines, or building footprints out of OpenStreetMap without the query timing out.

  • Overpass QL anatomy: area-first bounding, nwr tag filters, out center vs geom
  • The route-relation pattern: pulling named train/bus/hiking routes and stitching members
  • The timeout escalation path, and when to switch to Geofabrik/osmium/osm2pgsql
  • ODbL license rules: attribution, share-alike databases, freely-licensed produced works
The last mile: map to share-ready graphic

Map Poster

v1.0 · 2026-07 · 3 KB

Teaches Claude the last mile from a correct map to a picture you can post or print.

  • Canvas-first sizing for Instagram, stories, and print, with DPI rules
  • The QGIS print-layout workflow and the SVG → Illustrator handoff
  • Design rules: visual hierarchy, margins, two-font discipline, dark vs editorial identity
  • A pre-publish checklist from legend honesty to thumbnail readability

How to install a skill

Claude.ai / Claude apps

Download the .skill file, then upload it in a chat or in your Capabilities settings and choose Save skill. It stays on your profile for every conversation.

Claude Code

A .skill file is just a zip of the skill folder. Unzip it into ~/.claude/skills/ for every project, or commit it to a repo's .claude/skills/ to share it with everyone who works there.

You rarely have to name a skill. Claude reads the description and uses it when the request matches. Skills are plain files; open the zip and read them.