Planning with Kestrel

A trip starts from three questions: where you're going, when, and who's coming. Answer them yourself, or let Kestrel ask you about the trip you want in an interview. From your answers it recommends destinations and nights, dates checked against real fares, and who is going, each on a card you keep or change. Beside who is going, it asks whether there is a spending limit to plan to. Nothing is written until you confirm, and the interview spends no AI action.

Once the trip is made, Kestrel plans it without another press: this is its first run. Each stage lands in the trip as it answers, and Plan opens once the shape and the days have. While it works, the screen says how far it has got and a rough range of the time left, and after a couple of minutes you can open the plan without waiting. Read a real interview, then watch the run that followed, stage by stage.

The first run fills, in order:

• The shape: the regions the trip passes through, their nights, the legs between them and a budget for each.
• The days, one region at a time: each day's title, summary and places, and the area to stay in each night. It fills only days nobody has written on.
• Notes & Packing: the good-to-know notes and the packing list.
• The blurbs: a line or two for every region and place that has none.

What it leaves for you:

• The flights and stays to book. Plan shows the searches for each flight and each night's stay; booking is yours, and a booking you forward or add joins the trip.
• Blurbs above the AI reserve. The run writes only as many blurbs as the AI actions above the AI reserve pay for, since you asked for the trip to be planned, not for its blurbs. The rest wait on the Blurbs screen, which writes them when you ask.

See the trip a first run left, day by day, with its stay and flight searches.

Once the trip is planned, refine it with Kestrel in words: ask for a lighter day, a rainy day plan or a stay for a run of nights, or tap one of the chips on a day. Each turn proposes one change, which waits for you to accept it; nothing changes the trip until you do. The trip's planners share one conversation, and a new turn replaces a change nobody has decided yet. It starts from a trip like the one the demo planned.

Every member of a trip but its guests can ask Kestrel about it, from a sheet on the trip site: what's on tomorrow, where tonight's stay is, how long a drive takes. It answers from the trip as that member sees it, and each member's conversation is theirs alone. It changes nothing. What it answers from is a trip like the one the demo planned.

Whatever Kestrel writes into the trip is marked suggested, so you can tell its words from yours; once you edit a field, it is yours. The demo marks each field Kestrel wrote. Nothing reaches the trip site until you publish, so the people on the trip see none of it before you do.

Undo takes back the first run's last write, while nothing has been written since, for the planner who asked for the run. A stage that lands ends the undo of the one before it, so the run's undo is always its latest stage. What Kestrel proposes later, in Refine or in the Inbox, waits for you instead, and the toast after you accept it can undo it.

A spending limit is the most the whole trip may cost, every party's travel to and from it included. Give one in the interview, or skip it, and Kestrel plans the trip to fit: the places card shows each place's figures and the plan's estimate against the limit. When nothing fits, the card is the closest plan, about how far over it is, and what would close the gap, such as fewer nights, a cheaper region, driving rather than flying, or other dates.

The estimate adds each party's fares as checked to Kestrel's figures for each region's stays, food, local transport and activities. It is an estimate, never a quote, and a party whose fares couldn't be checked, such as one with no home airport, is named and left out of it. Each change Refine proposes carries its own estimate, and says beside the change when it would go over.

Planners see the limit and the latest estimate on Money, in the studio or in the app, where they change or clear it. The first run plans inside a limit on every trip; on Free, Money keeps it without showing it, and tells the organizer which pass shows it.

Kestrel spends AI actions, counted per trip. One buys a day it fills or a turn of Refine, 10 blurbs, or 5 questions to Ask Kestrel. One is spent only when Kestrel answers with something usable. The last of a trip's actions are its AI reserve, kept for what the trip's people ask for; work nobody asked for, such as the first run's blurbs or captions for the album, spends only what is above it.

• Free: 3 AI actions a trip. The first run is the shape alone, with a packing template; filling the days, Refine, and Ask Kestrel come with a pass.
• Trip Pass ($49, once, for one trip): 300 AI actions, the last 50 of them the reserve.
• Group Pass ($89, once, for one trip): 600 AI actions, the last 100 of them the reserve.

A trip on a pass that runs short can buy more, +100 AI actions for $10 at a time. The organizer buys a pass or more AI actions on the trip's Pass screen, in the studio or in the app. Every tier is on the pricing page.