There’s a very specific kind of chaos that happens when you try to plan a group trip.
It goes something like this: someone (usually you) sends a message in the WhatsApp group suggesting a destination. Then comes the avalanche — dates that don’t work, budget concerns, someone who wants to do it “properly” with a Google Doc, someone else who just keeps reacting with the 👍 emoji and never actually commits.
Eventually you pull together a rough plan across three tools: a Notion page for the itinerary, a Google Sheet for the budget, Splitwise for expenses. You’ve got five browser tabs open at all times. Nobody knows where the documents are. Half the group doesn’t have Splitwise. The person who made the Google Sheet has edit access; everyone else is view-only.
On the trip itself, the WhatsApp thread is a mix of “where are you?”, restaurant suggestions, and someone asking if anyone saved that museum booking. Nobody finds it in time.
That’s what I wanted to fix.
The One-App Problem
There’s no shortage of travel apps. There are apps for itineraries, apps for expense splitting, apps for shared documents. The problem is that they’re all separate. You’re always stitching them together in your head, re-explaining to the group where everything lives.
What I wanted was something that treated group trip planning as a single unified problem: one place for the itinerary, the budget, the expenses, the chat, the real-time map — all with a shared context. If the AI knows your itinerary, it can suggest things in the group chat. If your location is shared on the map, it’s the same trip as the one with the itinerary. It’s all connected.
The Privacy Part
The second thing I wanted to get right was privacy — in a way most travel apps don’t.
When you’re sharing real-time GPS coordinates with a group, or sending messages about which hotel you’re staying at and when, you’re sending information that has real security implications. Most travel apps store all of that in plaintext on their servers. They have access to it; their employees do; potentially their data partners do.
TripKit encrypts messages and location data on your device before they’re sent. The server stores ciphertext. Not even I can read your group’s conversations or see where you are. It uses the browser’s built-in Web Crypto API — no third-party crypto libraries, no npm packages that could introduce supply-chain vulnerabilities.
Is it the most convenient thing to implement? No. But it’s the right default. I’m treating group travel data like it deserves to be treated.
What TripKit Is Right Now
As of May 2026, TripKit is a small beta — 16 members, a handful of trips. The core is solid:
- Itinerary: day-by-day planning with AI drafting, drag-to-reorder, emoji reactions, iCal export
- Budget: multi-currency expenses, per-person splits, settlement calculator
- Chat: real-time group messages with read receipts, polls, reactions, AI bot
- Map: live location sharing, E2EE for sensitive trips
- Checklist: tabbed packing/task lists, AI-generated, swipe to delete
- Gamification: daily streaks, group streaks, 11 achievement badges
- PWA: install to home screen, offline access, push notifications
It’s not feature-complete — there’s no payment processing, no calendar integrations, no public API. But the fundamentals are there and they work.
What’s Next
The plan for the coming months is to get more real trips planned through TripKit, gather feedback from the people using it, and iterate. I’m not rushing to add features — I want to make what exists really good before adding more surface area.
If you’ve got a group trip coming up and want to try it, sign up here. It’s free, and if anything doesn’t work the way you’d expect, I genuinely want to know.