Command line

Agents that work in a shell, and people, can also run the rendering and data tools, and the GL JS API lookup, as commands. Each command runs one tool and exits, so nothing has to be set up in an AI client first.

npx -y maplibre-mcp render style.json --center 12.57,55.68 --zoom 12

A style is a file or a URL. The commands that render write the image to a file, and every command prints what the tool reports.

Commands

Command	What it does
render <style>	Renders the style to map.png, and reports map errors and missing icons
compare <before> <after>	Renders two versions of a style to compare.png, with the pixels that differ in red
compare-renderers <style>	Renders the style with two renderers to renderers.png, with the pixels that differ in red
describe-sources <style>	Lists the source layers and fields of each source, and the layers that use ones that are not there
debug-layers <style>	Says which layers draw at a place, and why the others draw nothing
inspect-tile <source>	Lists the source layers, geometry types and field values of the vector tile at a place
describe-gl-js-api <name>	Looks up a class, method, option or event of MapLibre GL JS

Options

The commands that render take the same camera and size as the tools. Without a camera, they use the one stored in the style.

Option	Example
--center <lng,lat>	--center 12.57,55.68
--zoom <zoom>	--zoom 12
--bearing <degrees> and --pitch <degrees>	--bearing -25 --pitch 55
--bounds <west,south,east,north>	--bounds 12.45,55.6,12.7,55.75 fits the map to the bounds, instead of --center and --zoom
--width <pixels> and --height <pixels>	--width 1024 --height 768
--renderer <name>	--renderer native draws with MapLibre Native, as Rendering describes
--renderers <first,second>	--renderers gl-js,native for compare-renderers
--out <file>	--out copenhagen.png

Debug layers

debug-layers checks every layer of the style at the place, or at the style's own center and zoom. --layers checks only the layers named.

npx -y maplibre-mcp debug-layers style.json --center 12.57,55.68 --zoom 14 --layers buildings,motorways

Inspect a tile

inspect-tile reads a TileJSON URL, a PMTiles archive or a tile URL with {z}, {x} and {y}. With --source, it reads that source of the style given instead. Without --center and --zoom, it reads the source's center at its highest zoom.

npx -y maplibre-mcp inspect-tile https://tiles.openfreemap.org/planet --center 12.57,55.68 --zoom 14 --layer transportation
npx -y maplibre-mcp inspect-tile style.json --source openmaptiles --center 12.57,55.68 --zoom 14

Option	Example
--source <id>	--source openmaptiles reads that source of the style
--layer <name>	--layer transportation lists only that source layer
--examples <count>	--examples 0 leaves out the example features, of which it shows 3

Look up the GL JS API

describe-gl-js-api looks up a class, method, option or event, like Map#flyTo or MapOptions.maxPitch, in the GL JS version maplibre-mcp renders with. --version looks it up in another version instead, fetched from jsDelivr.

npx -y maplibre-mcp describe-gl-js-api Map#flyTo
npx -y maplibre-mcp describe-gl-js-api maxPitch --version 5

Validate, format and migrate

The MapLibre style spec package has commands for these already, so maplibre-mcp doesn't repeat them. gl-style-validate exits with an error when it finds problems, and the other two print the new style.

npx -y -p @maplibre/maplibre-gl-style-spec gl-style-validate style.json
npx -y -p @maplibre/maplibre-gl-style-spec gl-style-format style.json
npx -y -p @maplibre/maplibre-gl-style-spec gl-style-migrate style.json