QGIS Skill

Geospatial analysis and GIS operations via FastMCP protocol, communicating with QGIS instance via TCP socket.

When to Use This Skill

• Calculate distances between geographic points
• Create buffer zones around features (proximity analysis)
• Transform coordinates between CRS (GPS to Web Mercator)
• Load and manipulate geospatial layers (Shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoPackage)
• Perform geoprocessing operations (intersect, union, difference, clip)
• Export map images for reports or web display
• Query features with spatial filters
• Style layers with categorized or graduated symbology

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  Claude Code / VisionFlow   │
│  (MCP Client)               │
└──────────────┬──────────────┘
               │ MCP Protocol (stdio)
               ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  QGIS MCP Server (FastMCP)  │
│  Port: stdio                │
└──────────────┬──────────────┘
               │ TCP Socket
               ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  QGIS Desktop (Display :1)  │
│  MCP Plugin on Port 9877    │
└─────────────────────────────┘

Tools

Tool	Description
load_layer	Load geospatial layer (Shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoPackage, WMS)
buffer_analysis	Create buffer zones around features
calculate_distance	Calculate distance between two points
transform_coordinates	Transform between coordinate systems
export_map	Export map view as PNG, JPG, or PDF
query_features	Query layer features with filter expression
list_layers	List all loaded layers
set_layer_style	Apply styling (simple, categorized, graduated)
geoprocessing	Intersect, union, difference, dissolve, clip
get_layer_extent	Get bounding box of a layer
health_check	Verify QGIS connection

Examples

# Load a GeoJSON layer
load_layer({
    "path": "/data/cities.geojson",
    "name": "Cities"
})

# Create 10km buffer around points
buffer_analysis({
    "layer_name": "Cities",
    "distance": 10000,  # meters
    "output_name": "city_buffers"
})

# Transform GPS coordinates to Web Mercator
transform_coordinates({
    "coordinates": [-122.4194, 37.7749],  # San Francisco
    "source_crs": "EPSG:4326",
    "target_crs": "EPSG:3857"
})

# Export map image
export_map({
    "output_path": "/output/map.png",
    "width": 1920,
    "height": 1080,
    "dpi": 150
})

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
QGIS_HOST	localhost	QGIS MCP plugin host
QGIS_PORT	9877	QGIS MCP plugin port
QGIS_TIMEOUT	60	Socket timeout in seconds

Troubleshooting

Connection refused:

# Check QGIS is running on Display :1
supervisorctl status qgis

# Verify MCP plugin is loaded
# In QGIS: Plugins → Manage Plugins → Search "MCP"

VisionFlow Integration

This skill exposes qgis://capabilities and qgis://status resources for discovery by VisionFlow's MCP TCP client.