DOCUMENTATION · INSTALL GUIDE

Install, activate,
start analysing.

GeoEDGE MCP is a desktop extension for Claude Desktop that turns Claude into a GIS analyst: you ask in plain English, it runs 123 deterministic GIS tools on your own machine and hands back maps and data files. This page walks the whole setup — install, licence, first analysis — and covers what to do when something looks wrong.

Download the extension ↓Get a licence key

// BEFORE YOU START

What you need

Claude Desktop

Version 1.0 or later, on Windows or macOS. This is a local desktop extension — it runs on your computer and reads your files, so it does not work in Claude on the web.

An internet connection, once

First launch downloads a private Python environment (GDAL, GEOS, PROJ and friends). After that, analysis runs entirely offline unless you ask a tool to fetch public data.

A GeoEDGE licence key

Free for 14 days, no card. It unlocks the analysis tools. Viewing, importing and editing your own data in the Map Editor needs no licence at all.

Your own data — or none

GeoEDGE reads files from your disk by path, and can also download boundaries, street networks, satellite imagery, land cover and climate data on request. You can try it with no files of your own.

// STEP 1

Install the extension

Download geoedge-mcp.mcpb. It is a single file — Claude Desktop’s own extension format.
In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Extensions and drag the .mcpb file into the pane (or use the install control there to pick it).
Fill in the two settings the extension asks for:
- GeoEDGE License Key (required) — from your account page. Claude Desktop stores it as a sensitive value.
- Data Storage Folder (optional) — where GeoEDGE reads and writes GIS files. Leave it blank and it uses ~/.geoedge_mcp/data in your home folder.
Let it finish its one-time setup. It provisions a private Python environment on first launch — see troubleshooting if that seems to be taking a while.

Claude Desktop manages the extension’s registration itself, so installing GeoEDGE never touches your claude_desktop_config.json and cannot interfere with other MCP servers you have configured.

// STEP 2

Get and activate your licence

Create a free account with your email address.
Confirm your email by clicking the verification link we send you.
A 14-day trial licence is issued automatically as soon as your email is verified. No card, no checkout step.
Copy your key from your account page.
Paste it into the extension’s GeoEDGE License Key field in Settings → Extensions → GeoEDGE-MCP. The extension validates it on launch and re-checks roughly hourly, so a subscription change takes effect without reinstalling anything.
Subscribe whenever you like from the same account page — US$7 / month, or US$70 / year for two months free. One flat rate, every feature, and your key stays the same.

Working as a team? Each licence is bound to one device, so multi-seat setups are arranged individually — email support@geoedge.com.au and we’ll set up a team subscription.

Prices in US dollars, excluding any applicable tax, which is calculated at checkout. Cancel any time from the billing portal.

// STEP 3

Run your first analysis

Start a new conversation in Claude Desktop. There are no commands to learn and no tool names to remember — describe the job and Claude picks the tools.

Check the connection

>_What GIS tools do you have available?

A list of tools back means the extension is connected and licensed. A single geoedge_installation_status tool means setup is still running.

Point it at your data

GeoEDGE reads files from your disk, so give it a path rather than a chat attachment — a file dragged into the chat window is invisible to it. On Windows, hold Shift, right-click the file and choose Copy as path; on macOS, right-click in Finder with Option held and choose Copy “…” as Pathname.

>_Import C:\Users\Jane\Documents\bores.gpkg, catchment.gpkg and protected_zones.gpkg from that same folder.

Each file is registered as a named layer, so from here on you can just say the name — no paths.

Ask the real question

>_Buffer these bore locations by 500 m, clip them to the catchment, and map the overlap with the protected zones.

Claude plans the sequence — buffer, reproject where needed, clip, overlay — and calls one deterministic tool per step. What comes back is a short plain-language answer (how many bores fall inside a protected zone, and by how much area), a map file, and a new named layer holding the overlap so you can keep working with it. Ask “show me that on a map” and it opens the result in the interactive Map Editor in your browser.

Two more to try

>_Compute NDVI from the latest Sentinel-2 tile and flag low-vegetation areas inside the project boundary.

>_Build a solar-farm suitability surface: slope under 5°, within 2 km of a substation, outside flood zones.

Everything runs on your machine. Your data is never uploaded to GeoEDGE, and the tools return short structured summaries and file paths rather than pasting rasters and feature collections back into the conversation — which is why your token usage stays flat however large the data gets.

// CAPABILITIES

What it can do

123 tools are advertised over MCP. They fall into these groups:

Vector geometry & overlay

Buffer, clip, intersect, union, difference, dissolve, spatial joins, centroids, and distance/area/length measurement — computed by GEOS/Shapely and GeoPandas, not by the model.

Coordinate systems

Reproject and transform between any CRS with PyProj, plus geodetic distance and area on the ellipsoid. Layers are put into a sensible projection before anything is measured.

Raster & imagery

NDVI and band math, clip to a boundary, reproject, resample, merge, tile, and zonal statistics over gigabyte rasters — via Rasterio/GDAL.

Suitability & MCDA

Multi-criteria decision analysis and weighted overlays for site selection, ending in a print-ready suitability map.

Spatial statistics

Spatial weights construction, spatial regression (GM_Lag spatial 2SLS/GMM-IV), density-based clustering (ADBSCAN), and spatio-temporal analysis (Spatial Markov, dynamic LISA) via PySAL. See what is currently withdrawn before planning around this group.

Topology & validation

Validate and repair geometries, flag overlaps and gaps, and run proximity checks before a result is used for anything.

Data sources

GADM administrative boundaries, OpenStreetMap street networks and shortest paths (OSMnx), Sentinel-2 / Landsat imagery via STAC, ESA WorldCover land cover, ERA5 climate data, plus your own PostGIS databases and ArcGIS REST services.

Maps & reports

Publication-quality static maps (PNG/PDF/JPG) and interactive Folium web maps — choropleth, graduated symbols, heatmaps, raster overlays — plus tabular output in standard formats (GeoJSON, GeoPackage, GeoTIFF, CSV).

Guided workflows

Common multi-step analyses run as a single deterministic call, with the provenance of every step recorded so a result can be traced back to its inputs.

What needs a licence, and what doesn’t

Seeing and editing your own data is free. The licence covers the analysis surface — every tool that computes a new spatial result. Free with no key at all: the Map Editor (visualize_data, import_data, editor_list_changes, close_map_editor), finding out what layers you have (list_layers, get_layer), and rendering maps of data you already have (create_map, create_web_map, create_suitability_map, open_output_folder).

Currently withdrawn — 16 tools

On 6 August 2026 a full-surface verification sweep drove every tool over a real MCP connection. Sixteen were found either crashing on ordinary input, returning a confidently wrong answer, or hanging, and they are no longer advertised. We would rather ship a smaller surface that is entirely trustworthy than a larger one with holes in it. Nothing has been deleted — each returns once its defect is fixed and the same sweep proves it.

Read this before you plan work around it: spatial autocorrelation and hot-spot statistics — Moran’s I, Geary’s C, Getis-Ord G and G*, local Moran, join counts and the gamma statistic — are not currently available, and neither are the k-nearest-neighbour and contiguity weights builders. Spatial weights construction, spatial regression, clustering and spatio-temporal analysis are unaffected.

Tools	Why
`morans_i, gearys_c, getis_ord_g, moran_local, getis_ord_g_local, join_counts, join_counts_local, gamma_statistic`	Spatial autocorrelation and hot-spot statistics. All eight reach the same underlying library through one shared code path, which can hang or terminate the server rather than return. Withdrawn as a group.
`knn_weights`	Computed nearest neighbours in degrees on geographic data and still reported success — a silently wrong answer.
`build_and_transform_weights, build_transform_and_save_weights, ols_with_spatial_diagnostics_safe`	Reject polygon layers, which makes contiguity-based weights unreachable.
`hillshade`	Fails on any DEM that declares a nodata value — which is nearly all of them.
`focal_statistics`	Can hang instead of returning.
`get_species_info, download_species_occurrences`	Broken by an upstream GBIF client parameter rename.

// TROUBLESHOOTING

When something looks wrong

The first launch is slow, or only one tool shows up

This is expected once. The extension is a thin bootstrap: on first launch it provisions a private Python environment using uv and installs the geoedge-mcp package from PyPI, including the GDAL, GEOS and PROJ binaries. That download typically takes a few minutes, and it needs an internet connection.

While it runs, Claude Desktop sees a single tool named geoedge_installation_status instead of the full toolset. Ask Claude to check the GeoEDGE installation statusand it will report progress. The full toolset appears automatically when setup finishes — no restart needed. If it still hasn’t appeared, quit Claude Desktop completely and reopen it.

The provisioning trace is written to a log file if you need to send it to us:

Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\GeoEDGE-MCP\logs\bootstrap.log
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/GeoEDGE-MCP/logs/bootstrap.log

“The GeoEDGE licence key … was not recognised”

The key in the extension’s settings isn’t one we issued — usually a typo, a truncated paste, or a key from a different account. Analysis tools return the error invalid_license_key and Claude is told to raise it with you at the start of the conversation.

Fix it in Claude Desktop → Settings → Extensions → GeoEDGE-MCP, pasting the key exactly as it appears on your account page. Map viewing, importing and editing keep working in the meantime.

“Your GeoEDGE subscription is inactive or expired”

The key is recognised, but the subscription behind it has lapsed — the 14-day trial ended, a payment failed, or the subscription was cancelled. Tools return subscription_expired.

Subscribe or check your status on your account page. Your key does not change when you subscribe, so there is nothing to re-paste into Claude Desktop — the extension re-checks on launch and roughly hourly while it runs.

Claude can’t see a file I dragged into the chat

Correct, and it isn’t a bug. Claude can read a chat attachment, but GeoEDGE cannot — attachments never land on your disk anywhere the local server can reach. Three routes work instead:

Paste the full path. On Windows, hold Shift, right-click the file and choose Copy as path. On macOS, right-click in Finder, hold Option, and choose Copy “…” as Pathname.
Ask for the map editor — say “open the map editor” and use its import button to browse for the file.
Ask GeoEDGE to fetch public data — boundaries, street networks, imagery, land cover, climate. No file of your own needed.

Where does the Map Editor keep my data?

In your data storage folder — the one you chose when installing the extension, or the default if you left it blank:

Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.geoedge_mcp\data
macOS / Linux: ~/.geoedge_mcp/data

Imported files, edited layers and every map or dataset a tool produces are written there, and layers you save in the editor become ordinary files in that folder that you can open in QGIS or anything else. The same folder holds a local tool-call audit log at _audit/audit.jsonl, which exists so the assistant can show its own recent work back to you. None of it is ever sent to GeoEDGE.

Separately, a small configuration folder holds your device identifier and cached licence token — %LOCALAPPDATA%\GeoEDGE (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support/GeoEDGE (macOS).

The editor itself is a small web server on your own machine. It binds to 127.0.0.1 on a random port, requires a token minted fresh for that session, starts only when you ask to see something, and stops when you close the editor, after 30 minutes idle, or when Claude Desktop exits.

A tool I expected isn’t there

Check the withdrawn list first — sixteen tools are deliberately not advertised while known defects are fixed. If what you need isn’t on that list, email support@geoedge.com.au and tell us what you asked for.

// UNINSTALL

Removing GeoEDGE

In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Extensions, find GeoEDGE-MCP, and remove it. That unregisters the tools and stops the local server. Nothing else on your machine is touched.
Optionally delete the private Python environment, which is the bulk of the disk space:
- Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\GeoEDGE-MCP and %USERPROFILE%\GeoEDGE-MCP-Python
- macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/GeoEDGE-MCP
Optionally delete the configuration folder holding your device identifier and cached licence token — %LOCALAPPDATA%\GeoEDGE (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support/GeoEDGE (macOS). Deleting it simply means re-entering your key if you reinstall.

Two things uninstalling deliberately does not do. Your data storage folder is left alone — it holds your own GIS files, and removing it is your call. And removing the extension does not cancel a subscription: do that from the billing portal on your account page.

// SUPPORT

Still stuck?

Email support@geoedge.com.au. If it’s an install problem, attaching bootstrap.log (path in troubleshooting) gets you an answer much faster. We reply to every message.

See also the Privacy Policy — which lists exactly what leaves your machine and what never does — and the Terms of Service.

Ready to install?

Download the extension, create an account for a 14-day trial key, and paste it into Claude Desktop. Nothing else to configure.

Download the extension ↓Start free trial

Install, activate,start analysing.