Mapbox Geospatial Operations

This is essentially a decision tree for when to use geometric calculations versus Mapbox's routing APIs. The core insight is simple but easy to mess up: use Turf.js for "as the crow flies" problems (straight-line distance, point-in-polygon checks, buffers) and routing APIs for "as the crow drives" problems (actual road distance, travel time, traffic). The matrices are thorough, covering distance calculations, proximity checks, and performance tradeoffs at different scales. Most useful when you're building something that mixes both types of operations, like creating a 30-minute delivery zone with isochrones and then doing fast geometric checks on whether addresses fall inside it.