There’s so much to do in Dubai. Every week there’s a new beach club, a new coffee shop, or another “hidden gem” restaurant all over Instagram. Finding places isn’t the problem. Picking one is.
And with a four-year-old son, the usual Dubai lists don’t really help. I need to know things like: Is there parking nearby? Can I take a stroller? Will he melt in the heat, or need a jacket in the colder months? Is there space for him to run around without me worrying?
I was spending more time deciding where to go than actually going. Scrolling Instagram and TikTok, checking Google Maps, asking friends… and then still ending up at the same three places we always go to.
So I built a skill for Oracle, my OpenClaw bot. It sorts out three problems for me:
- Not being able to decide. When I ask “where should we go?”, I get an actual answer. Not a list of 50 places.
- Forgetting places. We find somewhere great, swear we’ll go back, and three months later can’t remember the name.
- Ignoring the weather. Turning up at an outdoor spot in August. Or going to an indoor play centre on a perfect beach day.
How does it work?
The skill keeps a JSON database of places we’ve been to, or want to try. For each place it stores:
- The name, the area, and what it is (cafe, beach, coffee shop, etc.)
- Whether it’s indoors, outdoors, or a bit of both
- When it works: summer-safe, winter only, or all year round
- Tags like kid-friendly, work-friendly, stroller-friendly or Brand Club discount
- Our visits, with dates, notes and who we went with
When I add a new place, Oracle uses the goplaces CLI skill (from ClawdHub) to pull in the details from the Google Places API. I just add my own notes.
When I ask for a recommendation, it looks at:
- The weather right now (is it 45°C, or actually nice outside?)
- What kind of day we want (a Brand Club discount day, or somewhere he can burn off some energy)
- Whether we’ve been before (sometimes we want an old favourite, sometimes something new)
It also does a quick web search to see what people are saying. Reddit threads, recent reviews, parking tips, the best time to go, and whether it’s turned into a tourist trap. So instead of “this place is nice”, I get tips like “park at Festival City Mall and walk over, it’s much easier.”
A real recommendation from Oracle for Global Village, with a crowd warning, parking advice, and a better alternative.
Why not just use a list?
I’ve tried. Google Lists, Notion databases, spreadsheets. They all have the same problem: I have to keep them up to date myself, and they don’t actually help me decide.
With this, I just ask. “Somewhere kid-friendly for a Sunday morning.” Or “indoor, somewhere new, Brand Club if possible.” And I get three real suggestions back. In July it won’t suggest an outdoor terrace unless I’ve marked it summer-safe (which in Dubai means heavily air-conditioned).
Keeping track is easy too. I just tell Oracle “we went to Kite Beach” and it logs it with the date. Six months later I can ask “when did we last go to that Greek place in JBR?” and it knows.
It even stops me making the same mistake twice. I asked about beaches the other day, and Oracle reminded me that Kite Beach on a Friday afternoon means 40 minutes looking for parking. It got that from my own notes from last time. Notes I’d never have found by scrolling through my phone!
Dubai changes so quickly. Places open, get popular, get crowded, and close. A normal list goes out of date fast. This one stays useful, because updating it is just one message.
Can I use it?
Yes! There are two versions. dubai-guide is set up for Dubai’s heat and its areas (Jumeirah, DIFC, Marina, etc.). city-guide is a general version for anywhere in the world. Just set your city, and it adjusts the weather logic and the database to match.
Both are on my GitHub.
What’s next?
I’m trying to figure out how to hook it up to Entertainer, Fazaa and other discount memberships. That way it could check which places have an offer on before recommending them. Instead of flicking through apps, I could just ask “where can we go that has a buy-one-get-one-free deal right now?”