Routing and Origin-Destination Analysis

Computes routes, travel time/distance matrices, and isoline catchment areas (driving and walking modes), plus OD flow pattern analysis via spatial indexing. Two access paths, by scale:

• Single / ad-hoc (MCP-first): for one route, one location's isolines, or a small OD matrix, the CARTO MCP tools route, calculate_isolines, and calculate_od_matrix answer directly (each also has a capabilities operation to list supported modes/range types). No workflow needed. These run on any MCP host, including sandboxed chat hosts where the CLI can't. Prefer them for interactive requests.
• Table-scale / repeatable: for computing over a whole table or a reusable pipeline, use the Workflow patterns 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

Three main workflow patterns exist. Choose based on the use case: