Create a commissioned travel dossier, not a generic list of attractions. The finished guide should answer: why this place, for these travelers, at this moment? It should leave room for discovery while making the trip feel considered.
When to use
Use this skill when the traveler wants one or more of the following:
- an individualized itinerary or trip brief;
- a beautifully designed travel PDF or printable field guide;
- recommendations shaped by permitted preferences, constraints, or companions;
- a shareable, responsive web page for travel companions;
- a private and sanitized version of the same trip plan.
When not to use
- For booking, purchasing tickets, changing reservations, or handling payment.
- For visa, immigration, medical, safety, or legal decisions that require an authoritative professional or government source.
- For a generic destination summary when there is no concrete traveler or trip.
- For extracting text from an existing document. Route that to
anydoc; it reads documents but does not author or validate them.
Progressive routing
Read only the references needed for the request:
| Need | Read |
|---|---|
| Personal context, consent, pointed questions, or group trade-offs | references/intake-and-personalization.md |
| Current places, hours, prices, reservations, transit, or source quality | references/research-and-evidence.md |
| Trip thesis, anchor selection, day structure, or editorial voice | references/editorial-structure.md |
| Private/shareable editions or redaction | references/privacy-and-sharing.md |
| HTML, PDF, print CSS, rendering, or visual QA | references/pdf-rendering.md |
Use templates/trip-brief.json as the structured source of truth. Use templates/dossier-outline.md when drafting content before entering JSON.
Workflow
Match the process to the request. A narrow question - one neighborhood, one restaurant, one transfer, one practical fact - can be answered directly with sources in a short reply. Run the full dossier pipeline only when the traveler wants a guide, PDF, companion page, or a multi-day plan. The dossier format is a deliverable choice, not an automatic output for every travel question.
1. Establish the trip contract
Collect, or confirm:
- destination or route;
- arrival and departure dates, or at least the intended season;
- duration and approximate pace;
- who is traveling and any real differences in needs;
- budget range and currency, if relevant;
- mobility, dietary, sensory, language, or booking constraints;
- desired output: private PDF, shareable PDF, companion web page, or all three;
- intended audience: the traveler, the travel party, or wider sharing. The working model is private by default; ask who the output is for when it is not clear.
If a missing answer would change the recommendations, ask a pointed question. Do not run a long questionnaire. Read the intake reference for the question budget and personalization boundary.
2. Handle personal context explicitly
If the host can retrieve user preferences or history, use only context that is
relevant to this trip and permitted for this purpose. Internally classify each
personal signal as known, relevant memory, hypothesis, ask first, or
do not use. Never copy a raw private note into the guide. When personalization
would be surprising, explain the relevant basis briefly or ask permission.
3. Research current facts
Research only what the guide needs. Prefer official venue, operator, transit, government, tourism-board, and booking sources. Record URLs and retrieval dates in the source ledger. Separate:
- verified current facts;
- editorial interpretation about fit;
- estimates and assumptions;
- facts that remain unknown.
Do not present a search snippet, stale memory, or unsourced price as current truth. Read the research reference before making logistics or cost claims.
4. Build the editorial model
Write a one- or two-sentence trip thesis. Select a small set of anchors rather than ranking everything. Every anchor must state why it fits these travelers, when it works best, what it costs or requires, and what could make it fail.
Shape each day around:
- one anchor;
- one meal, drink, or local texture;
- one walk, neighborhood, or ordinary-life encounter;
- one pause or recovery space;
- one weather, energy, or closure alternative.
Include a short “skip this” section when famous options are poor fits. Read the editorial reference before drafting the dossier.
5. Render the artifacts
Work in a dedicated working folder for this trip: create one explicitly (for
example $(mktemp -d) on macOS/Linux, or a named folder under the system
temp directory) and keep the trip model, rendered HTML, sanitized editions,
and PDFs there. Never write outputs into the skill directory or the user's
home directory root. The examples below use $WORK for that folder.
Keep content separate from layout. Validate the content model first:
python3 scripts/validate-trip-brief.py "$WORK/trip-brief.json" --strict --json
Render a print-oriented HTML dossier:
python3 scripts/render-travel-guide.py "$WORK/trip-brief.json" \
--mode dossier --output "$WORK/travel-dossier.html" --json
For a responsive companion page, use the same model:
python3 scripts/render-travel-guide.py "$WORK/trip-brief.json" \
--mode companion --output "$WORK/index.html" --json
The renderer embeds the bundled CSS and local image assets when possible. Use a
print-capable browser or the repository's documents skill to turn the dossier
HTML into a PDF. The PDF is not complete until it has been structurally checked
and visually inspected. Read the PDF reference for the exact gate.
6. Produce a shareable edition when requested
Keep the private model as the source of truth. Create a sanitized copy rather than painting over a finished PDF:
python3 scripts/sanitize-trip-brief.py "$WORK/trip-brief.json" \
--profile shareable --output "$WORK/trip-brief-shareable.json" --json
Render and validate the sanitized model separately. Do not assume that a shareable version may expose exact dates, lodging, companions, addresses, booking identifiers, contact details, or private notes.
Required dossier sections
Adapt the length to the trip, but preserve the information hierarchy:
- cover: destination, trip line, duration/route, and image credit;
- the brief: the reason this trip fits these travelers;
- anchors: high-confidence experiences with fit and logistics;
- day architecture: anchors, texture, pauses, and alternatives;
- make it special: specific gestures that are not generic search results;
- practical field notes: transit, reservations, etiquette, costs, and caveats;
- skip this: attractive but poor-fit options, where useful;
- sources and freshness: links, retrieval dates, and unresolved uncertainty.
The visual default is a dark photographic cover with a route journey line, warm gold eyebrow, white headline, restrained red accent, generous white content pages, ghost section numbers, a color-coded day strip right after the brief, pace and budget meters, compact cards, a unified warm photo grade on anchor images, readable tables, and a bottom-of-page footer per section: a content- derived field note (failure mode, plan B, recheck item, or skip reason) when one exists, a next-section line, and a ghost route mark. Preserve contrast and selectable text. Do not let decoration hide uncertainty or practical caveats. The footer is informational, never a schedule: it repeats model content in one line, it does not invent new plans.
Exit criteria
Stop when all requested artifacts exist and:
- the trip model passes the bundled validator;
- current claims have source URLs and retrieval dates or are labeled uncertain;
- the PDF has passed structural and visual QA, if requested;
- a companion page has been checked at narrow and wide widths, if requested;
- private and shareable outputs are clearly distinguished;
- the delivery names the source model, renderer, validation result, and known limitations.