Geocoding Addresses in CARTO Workflows

Converts street addresses or place names into geographic coordinates (point geometries) — the essential first step when tabular data has an address column but no spatial column. Two access paths, by scale:

• Single / ad-hoc (MCP-first): for a handful of addresses (or reverse-geocoding coordinates back to addresses), the CARTO MCP geocode tool answers directly — operations geocode, reverse, and capabilities. No workflow needed. It runs on any MCP host, including sandboxed chat hosts where the CLI can't. Prefer it for interactive requests.
• Table-scale / repeatable: to geocode a whole table or build a reusable pipeline, use the Workflow pattern below. Load carto-create-workflow for the development process, JSON structure, and validation — it covers both paths (MCP create_workflow / validate_workflow / run_workflow when attached; the carto workflows CLI otherwise; routing signals in carto-basics/references/access-paths.md).

Over an API-token MCP session the ad-hoc/authoring tools are hidden (read/discovery only) — fall back to the CLI or reconnect over OAuth.

Instructions

A geocoding workflow follows this pipeline:

Source Table (with address column) -> Geocode -> (Filter successful) -> Save