The Scenario
You are a commercial real estate broker with thirty properties in an Excel workbook, addresses in column A. A prospective investor called and asked how walkable each property is — specifically, how many coffee shops, restaurants, and transit stops are within 500 meters of each. She wants counts by tomorrow morning's debrief.
You have used Mapbox for routing but never touched the POI search endpoint.
The bad version:
- Read the Mapbox Search API documentation, figure out category query syntax for coffee shops versus restaurants versus transit — each is a separate call per address per category.
- That is 30 addresses times 3 categories equals 90 API calls, each returning a paginated list you have to count.
- Export to CSV, import back into the workbook, count by address and category, paste into three columns.
The debrief is at 9 AM. It is 6 PM.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Excel workbook. It reads the property addresses, calls Mapbox category search for each POI type at each location, counts the results, and writes counts and nearby names into the right columns.
For each property address in column A, geocode it using Mapbox and count how many coffee shops are within 500 meters — write the count into column B and the names of the nearest 3 into column C. Do the same for restaurants in columns D and E, and transit stops in columns F and G.
What You Get
- Column B with coffee shop count within 500 meters for each property.
- Column C with the three nearest coffee shop names.
- Column D with restaurant count.
- Column E with three nearest restaurant names.
- Column F with transit stop count.
- Column G with three nearest transit stop names.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
The investor added grocery stores and pharmacies to the request
For each address in column A, use Mapbox category search to find counts within 500 meters for: coffee shops (column B), restaurants (column D), transit stops (column F), grocery stores (column H), and pharmacies (column J). Put the nearest 3 names for each category in the adjacent column.
You want a weighted walkability score
Run a Mapbox POI search for coffee shops, restaurants, and transit stops within 500 meters of each address in column A. Write raw counts into columns B, C, and D. Then compute a weighted walkability score in column E: transit count times 2 plus coffee shop count plus restaurant count. Sort the workbook by column E descending.
Some addresses are missing unit numbers but geocoding should still work at the street level
Geocode each address in column A using Mapbox. For any address where the geocode match type is not address level, write APPROX into column H. Run the 500-meter POI search for all categories regardless, writing counts into columns B, D, and F.
Full pipeline: geocode, multi-category POI search, score, sort, and flag top properties
Geocode all addresses in column A using Mapbox. Count coffee shops, restaurants, transit stops, grocery stores, and pharmacies within 500 meters. Write counts into columns B through F and name lists into columns G through K. Compute a weighted score in column L. Sort by column L descending. Mark the top 10 properties with INVESTOR PICK in column M.
One prompt handles all category searches, scoring, sorting, and highlighting.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your next property analysis workbook — paste in addresses and describe the POI categories you care about, and SheetXAI will call Mapbox and write counts and names for each. The isochrone article covers catchment area analysis. The Mapbox hub has the complete workflow list.