# A group trip guide — the itinerary, the bookings and the local picks, on one link Recipe No. 32, Home and family. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/trip-guide - For: someone organising a ten-person, three-generation family trip to Portugal - You bring: the booking emails, the flight times for each household, a list of who cannot manage stairs or late nights, the AI assistant you already use, and a family group chat full of opinions - You get: one trip document whose overview is the itinerary, a finding per day and per booking, researched local picks with their sources, and a password link that expires after you are home - Time: an evening for your assistant to build it, an evening or two to fix it up, and a few minutes on the road when plans change - Keep it: private while you work; share one document by a read-only link Ten people, three generations, eleven days, four places to stay and one train that matters. The plan lives in a dozen booking emails, two spreadsheets and a group chat where the answer to "what time is dinner on Tuesday?" is four hundred messages up. This recipe puts it in one document. The overview is the itinerary, a line a day, so anyone can see the shape of the trip in a glance. Each day gets a finding with times, meeting points and the rain plan; each booking gets a finding with the address, check-in and what is included. Your assistant builds the pages from the booking emails and researches restaurants and sights with sources; you fix up the days and copy in the picks you trust. The family reads it from one link, with a password, on their phones. Confirmation numbers stay in the booking emails and apps, left off the link. Passport details never go in at all. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: A *Travel* shelf, with a line saying each trip is one document, kept after you are home. - **Research document**: One document for the trip. The overview is the itinerary at a glance, a line per day. - **Finding**: A finding per day and per booking; the choices you made filed as *Decision*, the unsettled ones as *Question*. - **Your AI assistant**: Builds the days and bookings from your confirmation emails, leaving the numbers out, and researches local picks with sources as a separate private document. - **The editor**: Where you add the meeting points, the rain plans and who can skip what, and drag the days into order. - **Margin notes**: Where the family disagrees: "Rui wants the port tasting; Maria says not with the teenagers." Kept beside the line. - **Star and Focus**: Put the trip in Focus the week before you leave, so it sits at the top of the title page. - **Public link**: A password link to the trip document, set to expire after you are home, with private findings left out. - **The iOS app**: The trip on your phone, edited on the platform when the train is late. In TestFlight beta. ## Method ### 1. Give your assistant the bookings, not the numbers Collect the booking confirmations and the flight times and give them to whichever assistant you use, as files or pasted text in the assistant itself. Ask it to build a *Travel* shelf and one document, *Portugal, June 2027 — Lisbon, Porto and the Douro*: an overview that is the itinerary at a glance, a line per day; a finding per day, titled "Day 3, Saturday 12 June — Sintra, then Santo António"; and a finding per booking with the address, check-in and check-out, beds, stairs, what is included and the cancellation terms. Tell it never to copy a confirmation number, booking reference or passport detail. Where one would go, it writes where it is kept: "Confirmation in Rita's email, subject *Your stay in Alfama*." A reference and a surname are often enough to change or cancel a booking. ### 2. Fix up the days in the editor Open the document and press **Edit**. The assistant knows the bookings; it does not know your family. Under each day, add the plan in order, the meeting point, how to get there from where you slept, and the rain plan. Say who can skip what: "Avó and Avô stay in the old town if the palace walk is too steep; the rest meet them at 4 p.m." Check every booking against its email: dates, addresses, times. Keep the overview to a line a day, because it is all most of the family will read. Refer to children by role, "the teenagers", never by full name. ### 3. Ask your assistant for local picks, with sources For each thing you need to choose, dinner for ten in Porto, the Sintra palace tickets, a boat on the Douro, ask your assistant to research it on the web and file what it finds as a new document on the *Travel* shelf, one finding per option, each with its source links and the date of the page. Describe the group honestly: ages, walking sticks, the vegetarian, the budget. This needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it. Keep those documents private. Check hours, prices and booking rules on each place's own site yourself: they change, and an assistant can cite a page that does not say what it claims. Copy the ones you choose into the day's finding with the source. ### 4. Settle the arguments in the margin Everyone has a view, and they send it to you in the group chat. When one matters, select the line it is about and leave a **Note**: "Rui wants the port tasting in Gaia; Maria says not with the teenagers." The family cannot see notes; they are your working record. When you decide, write a *Decision* finding that says what you chose and why: "Train, not a hired car, to Porto: ten people, two cars, and nobody wants to drive in Lisbon." It saves having the argument twice. ### 5. Share it with a password and an end date The week before you leave, press **Share** on the trip document. Add a password and set the expiry to a week after you get home. Copy the link as it appears; know.sh shows it only once. Send the link in the group chat and the password another way, a call or a separate message. From each finding's own page, leave out what the family does not need: who owes whom, the private research, anything with a home address. Put the document in **Focus** the same week. ### 6. Keep it right on the road Plans change on the platform. Open the day in the know.sh iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta, and edit it: "Train delayed, meet at the café opposite the station at 2 p.m." The link shows the document as it is now, so the next time anyone opens it, they see the change. After the trip, the link expires on its own. Keep the document, and add a last finding, *What we would do again*, for the next time someone says "we should all go somewhere". ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Search the web: which sights in Lisbon and Sintra need timed tickets booked ahead in mid-June for a group of ten, including two people who cannot manage long climbs? For each, give the official ticket page as the source, how far ahead it sold out last year if a source says so, and the date of the page. File it in know.sh as a new document on my *Travel* shelf. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the document *Portugal, June 2027* on my *Travel* shelf and list, day by day, anything missing a time, a meeting point or a way to get there from where we slept. Put the list in a new finding called “Gaps before we go”. Do not change the days. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, check every finding in the document *Portugal, June 2027* on my *Travel* shelf for anything that should not be on a public link: confirmation or booking numbers, passport or ID numbers, card details, home addresses, children’s full names. Tell me the finding and the line, and do not repeat the numbers. ## Variations - A wedding weekend: the schedule as the overview, a finding per event and per hotel, and one link for every guest, set to expire a week after. - A heritage trip to the village in the records: pair the itinerary with the [family history](/cookbook/family-history), and add a finding per archive or parish office with its opening hours checked. - Leave the [house manual](/cookbook/house-manual)’s *Minding the house* link with whoever is watching your home while you are away. - Visiting museums as a group? Borrow the shape of a [docent tour](/cookbook/docent-tour): a finding per room, read on the phone in front of the work. ## Where it falls short - There is no offline mode. The link and the app need a connection, so keep boarding passes and train tickets in the airline and rail apps, and download maps before you go. - The family reads; it does not write. Changes reach you in the group chat and you make them, which is the point, but it means one person carries the phone. - There are no maps, photos or attached tickets in know.sh. Link to a map as a source and keep the tickets where they were issued. - Researched picks can be out of date or wrong, and research needs an assistant with web search. Opening hours, prices and booking rules change, and every one needs checking on the place’s own site. ## A note on passports, bookings and a link anyone can open A public link is readable by anyone who has it and the password, and it can be forwarded. Never put passport numbers, dates of birth or card details in know.sh. Keep confirmation numbers in the booking emails and apps, and your home address, and the dates it will be empty, off the link. Refer to children by role, not full name, and never add their photos. Entry rules for Europe have been changing. Check them for every traveller's passport on your government's official travel pages, and on the European Union's, well before you go. Nothing here is travel, legal or insurance advice. Assistants make mistakes. Check every hour, price and booking rule against the original source before ten people turn up at a closed door. Indexed under: Group travel, Itineraries, Bookings, Local picks, Expiring links, Portugal.