| name | crs-and-reprojection |
| description | Use when working with coordinate reference systems, EPSG codes, datum mismatches, reprojection choices, projected versus geographic CRS, unit confusion, or map alignment problems in geospatial data. |
CRS And Reprojection
Use this skill when the core problem is spatial reference correctness.
Goals
- Determine whether the current CRS information is known, missing, or wrong.
- Explain the operational impact of the CRS on measurements, overlays, and map alignment.
- Recommend a safe target CRS for the task.
- Distinguish assigning a CRS from reprojecting data.
Workflow
- Establish the current state.
- What CRS is declared?
- Is it geographic or projected?
- What units are implied?
- Check whether the CRS matches the task.
- Web mapping.
- Distance or area measurement.
- Local engineering workflow.
- Regional or global analysis.
- Identify the failure mode.
- Missing CRS metadata.
- Wrong CRS assignment.
- Mixed layers in different CRS.
- Datum mismatch.
- Coordinates with suspicious magnitude or axis order.
- Recommend the correction path.
- Assign the correct source CRS if metadata is missing but known.
- Reproject only after the source CRS is trustworthy.
- Choose a target CRS based on the analysis objective, not habit.
- State validation checks.
- Overlay known reference layers.
- Confirm units.
- Sanity-check extent and feature alignment.
Decision Rules
- Use a local or regional projected CRS for accurate distance and area work.
- Use geographic CRS only when the workflow truly operates in angular coordinates.
- Avoid Web Mercator for precision measurement analysis.
- If the source CRS is uncertain, stop and resolve that before downstream processing.
Output Format
Observed CRS situation:
Why it is a problem or not:
Recommended source CRS action:
Recommended target CRS:
Validation checks:
Risks / assumptions:
Example Triggers
- "These layers do not line up, help me diagnose the projection issue"
- "Which EPSG should I use for area calculations in this region?"
- "Do I assign a CRS or reproject this dataset?"
- "Why are the coordinates huge and the map is offset?"