# Overview
> What GIMLabs for QGIS loads, what it needs, and what it deliberately does not do.
**GIMLabs for QGIS** is a QGIS plugin that loads your project data onto the
map as styled layers: investigation locations, site boundaries and location
groups, drawn the way the GIMLabs map draws them.
It talks to the GIMLabs public read API at `https://api.gimlabs.io/v1`, so
everything it shows is the same data your team is working on in Manage, not an
export somebody made last month.
## What it loads
| Layer | Geometry | Loaded by default |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Locations | Points | Yes |
| Site boundary | Polygon, or a separate layer for line boundaries | No |
| Location groups | Convex hull polygons around each group's members | No |
Locations is why most people open the plugin. The other two cost extra
requests and need a scope your key may not carry, so you tick them when you
want them.
Layers arrive together inside a layer-tree group named for the project.
Loading three projects otherwise leaves nine loose layers with nothing saying
which belongs to what.
## Styling comes with the data
A borehole comes through with the colour, size and symbol it has on the Manage
map, and a boundary keeps its stroke and fill. Where a location type uses
custom marker artwork uploaded to your account, that artwork is what draws in
QGIS.
Styling is applied through QGIS data-defined properties rather than baked in,
so it stays visible and editable in the layer properties like any other layer
you would style yourself.
## Read-only, on purpose
Nothing you do in QGIS changes anything in GIMLabs. The plugin only ever
reads, because the API only ever reads. Move a point, delete a layer, edit an
attribute table: none of it travels back.
That also means the layers do not live-update. **Refresh layers** re-fetches
the project when you want it.
## What you need
- **QGIS 3.40 or newer**, including QGIS 4.x. Developed and tested on 3.44
LTR.
- A GIMLabs account on a **Pro or Legacy** plan.
- A GIMLabs **API key**, created by a Super Admin under Settings, API keys.
The API is a Pro feature, and the plugin cannot do anything without a key, so
GIMLabs for QGIS is effectively Pro and Legacy only. On a Go plan the download
is refused rather than handing you a plugin that could never connect.
## Working offline
Responses and marker artwork are cached under your QGIS profile, so a laptop
that has loaded a project once can load it again with no signal. See
[Loading data](/qgis/loading-data) for how the cache behaves and when it does
not step in.
## Next
Get the plugin into QGIS and keep it up to date.
Create a key, pick its scopes, and connect.
Pick a project, choose layers, refresh and cache.
What the messages mean and what to do about them.