ViaFrei

find_nearby

Read-onlyIdempotent

Overview of what is around a place or coordinate: nearby fuel stations, EV charging, parking, the nearest railway station and motorway junction, each with its distance. Use when someone asks "what is around me" or "what is near " — a broad look, not one category in depth. Do NOT use for a fuel grade's price (find_cheapest_fuel), charger/connector status (find_charging_station), parking kind/occupancy (find_parking), a NAME lookup (find_place/find_poi/find_address), or a coordinate's address (describe_location). Radius ≤ 15 km, up to 3 per category. Shows each source's attribution.

Input Schema

TableJSON Schema

Name	Required	Description	Default
`lat`	No	Latitude in WGS 84, e.g. 48.137. Use with lon when the caller already holds coordinates; otherwise use place.
`lon`	No	Longitude in WGS 84, e.g. 11.576. Use with lat; otherwise use place.
`place`	No	Where to look, as free text: a city ("München", "Munich"), a district or Kreis ("Kreis Fulda"), a Bundesland, a station or stop ("Hamburg Hbf"), a motorway junction ("AK Neufahrn"), or a street address with a house number ("Bahnhofstraße 12, 36037 Fulda"). A motorway number alone ("A7") resolves to the road, which has no single point — name a town or junction on it instead. Use this instead of coordinates whenever the person named a place. An address needs its town or postcode — a street and a number alone exist in many towns. Give either place OR lat+lon, never both.
`language`	No	Set this on every call to the language the person is writing in: "en" if they wrote English, "de" if they wrote German. Do not leave it out: it defaults to German ("de"), which is only the fallback when the language is genuinely unclear, so an English question sent without it is answered in German — a wrong answer. Place names, station names and road numbers are never translated in either language; in English the German term is kept in parentheses so the person recognises it on signs and in local apps.	de
`radius_km`	No	Search radius around place or lat+lon in kilometres (1–15, default 5). This tool answers "what is around me", not "search a wide area" — for that, use the specific tool with its own wider radius.
`categories`	No	Which categories to include: "fuel", "charging", "parking", "station" (railway station), "junction" (motorway junction). Omit for all five. Pass a subset only when the person named one — otherwise the full picture is the point of this tool.

Schema Changelog

Changes observed during successful MCP inspections.

First observedOct 15, 2026

TDQS

A4.4/5.0

Behavior4/5

Does the description disclose side effects, auth requirements, rate limits, or destructive behavior?

Annotations already cover safety (readOnly, idempotent, non-destructive), so the description's added value is its operational limits: radius capped at 15 km, up to 3 results per category, and per-source attribution being surfaced. It doesn't discuss failure modes or behavior when a place doesn't resolve, but the disclosed caps go beyond the annotations.

Agents need to know what a tool does to the world before calling it. Descriptions should go beyond structured annotations to explain consequences.

Conciseness4/5

Is the description appropriately sized, front-loaded, and free of redundancy?

Front-loaded with purpose, then use, then do-not-use routing, then constraints — a logical order with no filler. It is dense and long, but given six parameters and twelve sibling tools, nearly every clause earns its place.

Shorter descriptions cost fewer tokens and are easier for agents to parse. Every sentence should earn its place.

Completeness5/5

Given the tool's complexity, does the description cover enough for an agent to succeed on first attempt?

With no output schema and zero required parameters, the description covers what an agent needs: what comes back (per-category items with distances and attribution), the radius cap, and the latitude/longitude-vs-place choice. Nothing essential is missing.

Complex tools with many parameters or behaviors need more documentation. Simple tools need less. This dimension scales expectations accordingly.

Parameters3/5

Does the description clarify parameter syntax, constraints, interactions, or defaults beyond what the schema provides?

Schema description coverage is 100% and the schema text is very rich (WGS 84 ranges, place free-text formats, language default warning), so the schema carries the burden. The description adds one genuinely new detail — the up-to-3-per-category return cap — and restates the radius bound, hence the baseline 3.

Input schemas describe structure but not intent. Descriptions should explain non-obvious parameter relationships and valid value ranges.

Purpose5/5

Does the description clearly state what the tool does and how it differs from similar tools?

The description names a specific resource scope (fuel, charging, parking, railway station, motorway junction) and its distinguishing trait — a broad radius-based overview with distances per category. It explicitly contrasts itself with one-category-in-depth tools like find_cheapest_fuel and find_parking, so an agent can separate it from all siblings without opening a schema.

Agents choose between tools based on descriptions. A clear purpose with a specific verb and resource helps agents select the right tool.

Usage Guidelines5/5

Does the description explain when to use this tool, when not to, or what alternatives exist?

It gives a direct trigger ("what is around me", "what is near <place>") and then an explicit do-not-use list mapping each excluded intent to the right sibling (find_cheapest_fuel, find_charging_station, find_parking, find_place/find_poi/find_address, describe_location). Nothing about routing is left to inference.

Agents often have multiple tools that could apply. Explicit usage guidance like "use X instead of Y when Z" prevents misuse.

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