design-postgis-tables

design-postgis-tables is a skill for Cursor from timescale/pg-aiguide. It costs 31 tokens per session (4,160 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A reference for designing PostgreSQL tables that store and search geographic data with PostGIS, an extension for location-aware databases.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when building location-based applications that need radius searches, map bounds, intersection checks, nearest-place searches, or distance and area calculations.
Why use it?
It helps you choose suitable spatial data types, coordinate systems, indexes, and query patterns before performance or accuracy problems appear.

Skill for Cursor

Written for Cursor: shipped in a Cursor plugin.

Part of the pg-aiguide plugin — 9 skills, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it when building location-based applications that need radius searches, map bounds, intersection checks, nearest-place searches, or distance and area calculations.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables
About the project

pg-aiguide is a knowledge and tooling project that gives AI coding assistants version-aware PostgreSQL documentation and curated database practices. Developers use it through agent skills, an MCP server, or a Claude Code plugin to help coding tools generate better PostgreSQL code. The catalogue entries are its skills, instructions, MCP integration, and rule.

timescale/pg-aiguide · 1,835 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add timescale/pg-aiguide --skill design-postgis-tables
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/timescale/pg-aiguide

Made for: Cursor.

Or install pg-aiguide, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 9 skills, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for design-postgis-tables

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for design-postgis-tables

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/timescale/pg-aiguide/design-postgis-tables.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 31 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,160 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00031 $0.04160
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.02080
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00832
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00416

Measured 11d ago against content hash c94284724fb0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-postgis-tables scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/design-postgis-tables/SKILL.md · 495 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 495 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PostGIS Spatial Table Design

Before You Start (5 Questions)

  1. What is the geographic scope (single city/region vs global)?
  2. What are your primary query patterns (within-radius, bbox, intersects, nearest-neighbor)?
  3. What units do you need for distance/area (meters vs CRS units), and how accurate must they be?
  4. What is the expected scale (rows, write rate), and is the data mostly append-only?
  5. Do you need 3D (Z) or measures (M), or is 2D enough?

SQL injection note: When turning these patterns into application code, use parameterized queries for user-provided values (WKT/WKB, coordinates, IDs, radii). Avoid string-concatenating untrusted input into SQL; for dynamic identifiers, use safe identifier quoting/whitelisting.

Core Rules

  • Always use PostGIS geometry/geography types instead of PostgreSQL's built-in geometric types (POINT, LINE, POLYGON, CIRCLE). PostGIS types provide true spatial capabilities.
  • Choose between GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY based on your use case: GEOMETRY for projected/local data with Cartesian math; GEOGRAPHY for global data requiring accurate spherical calculations.
  • Always specify SRID (Spatial Reference Identifier) when creating geometry columns. Use 4326 (WGS84) for GPS/global data, appropriate local projections for regional data.
  • Create spatial indexes on all geometry/geography columns using GiST (default). Consider BRIN only for very large GEOMETRY tables where rows are naturally ordered on disk and you can tolerate coarser filtering.
  • Use constraint-based type enforcement with GEOMETRY(type, SRID) syntax to ensure data integrity.

Geometry vs Geography

When to Use GEOMETRY

  • Local/regional data within a single coordinate system
  • Projected coordinates (meters, feet) for accurate area/distance calculations
  • Complex spatial operations (buffering, unions, intersections)
  • Performance-critical queries (Cartesian math is faster)
  • Data already in a projected CRS (UTM, State Plane, etc.)

Read the full file on GitHub · 495 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 495 lines · 31 tokens per session scan A c94284724fb0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-postgis-tables is a skill published in the GitHub repository timescale/pg-aiguide (1,835 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 31 tokens to every session and 4,160 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

database-optimizer

Optimizes database queries and improves performance across PostgreSQL and MySQL systems. Use when investigating slow queries, analyzing execution plans, or optimizing database performance. Invoke for index design, query rewrites, configuration tuning, partitioning strategies, lock contention resolution.

Jeffallan/claude-skills · 54 tokens

postgres-pro

Use when optimizing PostgreSQL queries, configuring replication, or implementing advanced database features. Invoke for EXPLAIN analysis, JSONB operations, extension usage, VACUUM tuning, performance monitoring.

Jeffallan/claude-skills · 41 tokens

pdlc-db-migrate

A database migration manager driven by database design documents. A migration is a versioned script that changes a database structure and can also undo that change.

kanfu-panda/pdlc-skills · 11 tokens

pdlc-db-design

A database design workflow that turns an existing product requirements document and, when available, API design into a database plan. It describes entities, fields, links, indexes, constraints, and an entity-relationship diagram, which shows how data types connect.

kanfu-panda/pdlc-skills · 8 tokens

database

ออกแบบ Database Schema สำหรับ PostgreSQL และ Laravel แบบ code-first สร้าง schema, relationships, business rules และ migration-ready guidance ใช้ skill นี้ทันทีเมื่อผู้ใช้พูดถึง database schema, table design, Entity-Relationship, Laravel migration, PostgreSQL model เช่น "ออกแบบ table ให้หน่อย", "ช่วยทำ ER diagram"…

natthasath/natthasath-marketplace · 112 tokens

sql-expert

Expert SQL query writing, optimization, and database schema design with support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and SQL Server. Use when working with databases for: (1) Writing complex SQL queries with joins, subqueries, and window functions, (2) Optimizing slow queries and analyzing execution plans, (3) Designing…

AutumnsGrove/ClaudeSkills · 106 tokens