[HN Gopher] Show HN: Ikuyo a Travel Planning Web Application
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Show HN: Ikuyo a Travel Planning Web Application
Hi HN, In the past ~8 months, I have been working on a side
project that helps me plan my travels. While most months saw no or
little progress, in the past ~3 months I have been adding tons of
features to support my next big trip later this year. I've written
in my blog on the feature set [1] but in short they are: -
Timetable view of activities, accommodations, and day plans - List
view and map view of them - Commenting on them - Expense tracker
- Sharing and collaboration with friends The source code is also
available on GitHub [2] This is an example of a view-only trip:
[3] So far, I think I'm satisfied with the features and is
progressing really well in my travel planning. Let me know what
you think! Thanks! [1] https://blog.kenrick95.org/2025/06/ikuyo-
plan-your-next-trip... [2] https://github.com/kenrick95/ikuyo [3]
https://ikuyo.kenrick95.org/trip/2617cd98-a229-45d4-9617-526...
Author : kenrick95
Score : 217 points
Date : 2025-06-11 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ikuyo.kenrick95.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ikuyo.kenrick95.org)
| usrme wrote:
| I would definitely recommend adding example images directly to
| the main page, along with the link to the example trip. Otherwise
| there's nothing really to draw users in to using if they have to
| go searching for how the experience looks like.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for your suggestion! I was hesitant at first cause it
| was under heavy development so anything I put there on main
| page might get outdated very soon. I'll add them very soon~
| swyx wrote:
| well screenshotting is easy and cheap + even if its outdated
| it helps communicate what you do
| swyx wrote:
| also just because your landing page now has an example
| featuring singapore - this is my guide to singapore
| http://swyx.io/sg-guide and i feel like encouraging people to
| make opinionated guides to where they live is kinda nice and
| under explored
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| curation definitely is underexplored and I'd say we're
| seeing more of that in the future given the AI slob that's
| hitting us.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Also let the user do something without them making an account
| or verifying an email.
| Tepix wrote:
| Both your privacy policy and your terms of service mention
| contacting you, but i don't see a way to do so.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out! Will fix that soon
| rootsudo wrote:
| It feels like everyone the past few years have been using
| Japanese for their side apps. I think this can lead to confusion.
|
| on the other hand, if you add some more social elements it could
| be fun, theres a few apps that allow people to upload places and
| hotspots too so its more community driven, but also thats kinda
| instagram too.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Haha thanks! Yeah might be a good idea if there are lots of
| usage, but for now it's mostly me and close friends so not much
| yet
| criddell wrote:
| Photo sharing is a good idea I think. I have family who do
| RVing and they use some app that lets them privately share
| their gallery. It's cool to see where they are and what they
| are doing as they move around the country.
|
| A gallery with a read-only private link would suffice.
| leetrout wrote:
| Do you have sample credentials?
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Sorry I couldn't provide them, however you can use throwaway
| email service to get around that part
| e-gn wrote:
| Sounds interesting, but I (and I suppose others reaching the
| landing page might be as well) was discouraged to check it out
| because it requires me to sign up to learn more.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Yeah I agree, haven't get around that part yet since the auth
| part is handled by 3rd party (InstantDB). However you can use
| throwaway email service and it accepts that too
| gregorvand wrote:
| Show screenshots. Show how me and my family will use it and feel.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. I'll add them soon
| noworld wrote:
| France is in your destination list twice with nothing
| differentiating the two entries.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out! Fix should be deployed soon
| mikesabat wrote:
| My current 'favorite idea I probably won't build' is an sms chat
| bot that does exactly this for guys in their 30s & 40s. The hard
| part is actually organizing the group of friends to pick a
| weekend and location. So a bot that can help with all of that
| first, is really compelling for me.
|
| OP, let me know if you want to do a user group trying to help us
| organize a trip.
| abdhass wrote:
| That is so me and my friends. There's about 20 of us in our
| group chat. Everyone has an opinion but not one guy wants to
| make a decision
| kenforthewin wrote:
| We're trying to build this over at https://tripjam.app
| adavila78 wrote:
| just created an account, only to be greeted with a white
| screen...
| https://ikuyo.kenrick95.org/trip/4725b43a-595b-433d-b746-79c...
| seems the app not ready for primetime...
| kenrick95 wrote:
| ah damn... this might take a while to debug, as I don't have
| any error monitoring setup yet ._.
|
| May I check what's your browser & version? Thanks
| adi4213 wrote:
| What stack are you using? You probably can get away with the
| free tier of sentry and posthog for a while for error
| monitoring and observability
| kenrick95 wrote:
| It is React on the front-end with InstantDB (
| https://www.instantdb.com/ ) as its back-end.
|
| I was trying not to add more external SDK since it
| contributes to the bundle size. Adding Sentry soon for some
| observability.
| doix wrote:
| This is going to be quite negative(sorry), but I don't really see
| the value here. Perhaps I don't really "get it", but I don't see
| how this helps you plan. It just lets you visualize the plan
| after you've created it.
|
| I travel "full time" with my girlfriend, and she does most/all of
| the planning. The hard part isn't writing down what needs to be
| done, it's coming up with the plan in the first place.
|
| First you pick a location, then you pick points of interest. Then
| you need to devise a route that makes sense that lets you see all
| those points and how you're going to get between them.
| Trains/buses/taxis, the timetable for those modes of
| transportation, the backup for when you're inevitably late, the
| "point of no return" where it's time to give up on that
| attraction.
|
| For some places, reminders when tickets go on sale for the thing
| you want to do if it's extremely popular. Where it makes sense to
| do things as day trips and where it makes sense to just move to a
| more rural location/camp to see things. What to do with your
| luggage and how to move it from place to place.
|
| Admittedly, I haven't signed up, I just looked at the free
| example and showed it to my girlfriend. She uses excel + google
| maps for visualizing the plan and we're not sure what this gives
| ontop of that. We're also always together in person, I could see
| how if you were far apart, perhaps the commenting and stuff could
| be useful?
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for your feedback. Yeah I get that everyone has their
| workflow and it's okay to stick with them. For me, I used to
| have that Excel + Google Maps workflow too, but I feel like
| collaborating with person over the other side of the globe is
| such a pain in Excel, that's why I come up with this thing
| eschatology wrote:
| You gotta add debouncing or disable the button(s) once clicked
| and are pending for results; got several email codes and random
| errors because I clicked again thinking the button(s) didn't work
|
| Adding a sample trip might help a lot to give an idea of how to
| use it.
|
| Inputs feel tedious and not smart enough; so much that it feels
| to get in the way instead of helping.
|
| Activity date input shouldn't be free date input; I inputted the
| start and end date earlier, couldn't that be used to help limit
| the input range? End date/time feels tedious as well, it could be
| a duration input instead (eg 3h at this location).
|
| It also lacks some extra planning features, like pooling the list
| of locations to visit (no dates yet), for later to be scheduled
| if it ends up interesting.
|
| Personally I would remain using Wanderlog..
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback and ideas!
|
| Yeah, some of the input elements are quite 'basic' as they use
| browser default input element. I shall improve of them in due
| time...
| folknor wrote:
| Could you please consider using something other than recaptcha?
|
| There's been several alternatives mentioned on HN over the past
| year. A quick search through my browser history revealed
| https://altcha.org/open-source-captcha/ as the most recent link
| I'd been to.
|
| Just to say I have no experience of any of the "alternative"
| captchas, I just hate the one you're using.
|
| Also please get your app up and running fast so we can use it for
| our vacation in early September, haha :-) Thank you.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| Unfortunately I've been challenged with the Recaptcha quite
| often too. That part is apparently injected by my shared
| hosting service (Hostinger) with no ability to turn off even
| when I check with their support. I hosted this at my main site
| (kenrick95.org)'s shared hosting service as a subdomain since I
| don't need to pay extra to do so.
|
| I might consider moving it out somewhere else if I decide to
| maintain it separately from my main site.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Seems similar to Wanderlog but less mature. I wish you best of
| luck!
|
| Whatever you do, please do not make the app as slow as Wanderlog
| - I literally had to create an Android app to interact with my
| trips because their app isn't optimized at all!
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words!
| NihalSingh1 wrote:
| Nice app, nice idea you thought of.
| mi100hael wrote:
| What's your goal with the project?
|
| I built a web app that looked very similar a few years back:
| friends & family collaboration on a trip plan, itinerary with map
| view, packing list, notes/journaling, favoriting, private or
| public with commenting, that sort of thing.
|
| My thesis was that the current common method of trip planning in
| a shared doc was messy, and a more structured, guided approach
| would make the process easier for users. And being able to
| share/show trip plans with others who aren't on the trip would be
| something people would want to do.
|
| My goal was to scale it and get actual broad adoption, make it a
| social experience, but even getting a handful of users was an
| uphill battle.
|
| I found that my thesis was likely wrong for a couple of reasons:
|
| 1. The messy shared doc approach had the benefit of being very
| low-friction. It's easier to just type a bulleted list than to
| click "add item" and fill out some form fields.
|
| 2. Browser usage was (I think) a limiting factor. I'm not sure if
| it would have worked as a native mobile app, but it definitely
| wasn't going to work as a web app.
|
| 3. When people want to show off their trip or look for travel
| inspiration, they turn to apps like Instagram and Tiktok. They
| want visuals with photos/videos, not a list with a map. It's very
| difficult to create a new purpose-built social network.
|
| I ended up winding it down and moving on.
|
| I don't mean this to be a Dropbox "why are you building this"
| comment, but more hopefully pointing out a few challenges that
| exist in the space that you'll likely need to think about if you
| want to scale.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Several things, but wide adoption is NOT one of them.
|
| First and foremost, it's for my own personal use. I like to
| organize things and I find that the messy doc/spreadsheet way
| is way too messy for my liking, especially when I find a need
| to coordinate plans with other friends overseas. That's why I
| started this.
|
| Secondly, it's for fun and for learning. I enjoy build websites
| and explore what browser can provide. I learned that browser
| have API for drag-and-drop element to pass data to a target
| element
|
| So at the end of the day, I see it as a fun side project and
| nothing more.
|
| Thanks for sharing your experience too :)
| layer8 wrote:
| The landing page very much looks like a serious product
| looking for adoption, though. It might mislead users into
| thinking that it is intended to be something more than a fun
| side project.
| yumraj wrote:
| Is there a harm in that, if it meets a user's requirements
| they can decide whether or not to use it, right?
| pimlottc wrote:
| I agree that anything that requires tripmates to make an
| account is going to be a hard sell for most groups. At least
| most people are already on Google Docs these days.
|
| It's not clear to me how much of this requires an account, but
| I would encourage making as much as possible accessible without
| a login. Some people will want to help plan but there are also
| many people who just want to come along for the ride.
| mountainriver wrote:
| A friend of mine built a similar thing as a mobile app and also
| failed to get adoption.
|
| I think what these tools miss is that it's kinda fun to plan a
| trip and I don't necessarily need an app to help. It seems hard
| and like something I'll need to learn once, and relearn when I
| need it again
| packetlost wrote:
| > The messy shared doc approach had the benefit of being very
| low-friction
|
| This. If you want someone to use your thing, it needs to have a
| very strong value proposition over familiar general purpose
| tool.
|
| This applies to basically every tool, but especially software.
| franciscop wrote:
| Looks nice! Since it's MIT licensed and I'd assume free to use,
| I'd suggest including that in the landing page. Since the
| homepage didn't include the keywords "price", "pricing", "free"
| or "cost" (related to pricing) I unfortunately thought it'd have
| dark patterns where you start planning a trip and then at some
| point it'd ask for payment.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words! Yeah great suggestion, I'll add
| them soon :)
| biophysboy wrote:
| This is cool. Having used similar apps (e.g. wanderlog), one
| thing they lack that I would LOVE is timetable filtering. When I
| travel, I find that I'm either in logistics mode or fun mode.
| Here's the idea:
|
| In logistics mode, I want a detailed, precise timetable focused
| on transportation and lodging. I don't even want to see my fun
| ideas.
|
| In fun mode, I want a relaxed set of suggestions based on my
| current location, and a single timestamp telling me when I need
| to go back into logistics mode.
|
| Does that make sense? Its almost like I want two travel agents: a
| didactic drill sargeant to get me from A to B, and a chill surfer
| bum that helps me go with the flow.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words and ideas!
| abdhass wrote:
| I would love to see room planning built in. We book cottages for
| staycation with multiple families. It would be nice to allocate
| people to room's
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thank you for the ideas!
| JoshTko wrote:
| What key feature are you providing that can't be easily done by a
| google sheet?
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Hmmm okay so I come from Excel world and when I arrange my
| plans in timetable view (in Excel), I need to 'merge' several
| cells together. However if circumstances change and I have to
| rearrange those events to other days or other timings, it
| become a pain to unmerge cells and move them around.
|
| I think this is one of the main reason I started this web app
| as a 'timetable' view first and then build other features later
| on
| corps_and_code wrote:
| Neat! I'd like to give this a try with my family.
|
| I noticed the MIT license, any plans to document how someone
| could self host this? Or would you be open to contributions from
| other people to do that?
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Probably you just need to copy `.env.example` into `.env` and
| replace the required API keys. [1] The whole 'back-end' is an
| external dependency hosted elsewhere by InstantDB [2] While
| they claim that you can self-host it too, I haven't been
| bothered to self-host it myself. Other than that, I'm using
| MapTiler Cloud for the mapping service [3] since I find that
| while there are free ones, those can be quite limited when
| doing things like geocoding (querying keyword to coordinates).
|
| [1] https://github.com/kenrick95/ikuyo/blob/main/.env.example
|
| [2] https://github.com/instantdb/instant
|
| [3] https://www.maptiler.com/
| figmert wrote:
| This is amazing. I've used wanderlog extensively, but while its
| feature set is great, it can be a nightmare to work due to how
| slow it can be sometimes.
|
| I've just registered to test it out a little bit. I tried to
| replicate my upcoming trip that I have set up in Wanderlog, and
| have the following feedback:
|
| - Overall, amazing! Snappy. Real easy to follow.
|
| - I love the simplicity.
|
| - I like that this is essentially excel (kind of), but with
| travel specific additions.
|
| Now for the potential improvements:
|
| - I can't add someone else as an editor, it seems. Clicking add
| just logs a "TripForm" with the form object. I don't see any
| network requests either.
|
| - Expenses don't allow me to select how to split it (maybe this
| is an issue because there's no-one else part of the trip?)
|
| - Timetable contrast needs a bit of work. Maybe needs some
| padding/margins or something.
|
| - MapTiler doesn't seem to have a good enough database. I
| struggled to add 152 Morrison Road
|
| - Activities can't span multiple days (I tried adding a train
| ride than arrived 45 mins past midnight)
|
| - Adding/editing activities while on the timetable page, does not
| update them until I refresh (or navigate away)
|
| Outside of all that, how are you planning to monetise this? The
| code is released under MIT, which doesn't stop anyone from adding
| some subscription plan, hosting it, and advertising it. May I
| suggest something like AGPL?
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Thank you for trying them and providing such a detailed
| feedback!
|
| - On Trip Sharing, hmm that seems weird. While I understand
| that there's no 'loading' indicator yet, one should be able to
| do so if one is the 'owner' of the trip
|
| - Expense split: because that feature isn't there yet
|
| - Thanks I'll consider it
|
| - The map I chose on MapTiler is OpenStreetMap, but I limit it
| to Point-of-interest only, maybe I need to expand it to match
| more kind of objects
|
| - Aha, for that case, I find that it's so troublesome that I
| have to split the activity into two different elements for
| display in the timetable, so I disabled the case for now.
| Thanks for a great use case!
|
| - Hmm strange, the activites should reflect live. Maybe the
| 'back-end' is a bit slow
|
| Anyway, the 'back-end' is InstantDB ( https://www.instantdb.com
| ) and it's opening a WebSocket connection, that's why you don't
| see network calls when doing operations
|
| P.S. I don't think I'll monetise this ever. If someone forks it
| and monetise it, as long as it doesn't affect me, I think I'm
| fine with it. If I run out of my 'free usage' quota, I'll
| probably limit the users to only handful of people
| ensignavenger wrote:
| The AGPL won't prevent anyone from adding some subscription
| plan, hosting it, and advertising it. It does require them to
| license derivative works under the AGPL.
|
| There are many different goals for developing software, and
| different ways to make money doing it. The AGPL can be useful
| for some of them, but can be rather limiting too.
| phsource wrote:
| Hey figmert -- this is Peter, one of the co-founders of
| Wanderlog. I'm actually on a trip to Italy right now and
| definitely feel your pain with some performance issues, and
| we've been working hard to improve this.
|
| If you haven't tried the app in the last few months, can you
| try it again and let me know what parts are feeling slow for
| you by emailing me directly at peter@wanderlog.com? I'd love to
| take a closer look, and especially if you've got specifics with
| screenshots/videos, I can try to fix some of these myself too.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| My family and I have a trip to London/Paris in July with
| children. Tried Wanderlog and it's not great. Going to give this
| a try!
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Just move to Canada. Paris is a one hour drive from London.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Really nice, but it is unclear to me how time is represented with
| regard to timezones.
|
| Some large countries may have multiple time zones, and
| itineraries can be confusing, this needs consideration from data
| modeling and ux side as well. The first glance at the UI didn't
| make it obvious for me how this is handled, I suppose local time
| is used always.
| kenrick95 wrote:
| Yeah this is not that obvious, but the selected 'destination
| time zone' is the only time zone that one will be working with
| when planning the activities within the trip. (When
| inputting/reading the activities' time zone, they are all the
| destination's time zone)
|
| The only local time zone used is at the comments (but hopefully
| it is clearer since I show the time zone offset there? I don't
| show it on the events since I feel it could be way too verbose)
|
| I understand that there could be case where one's trip crosses
| multiple time zones, but at this moment that wasn't supported
| yet.
| pimlottc wrote:
| At the very least, you have to consider time zones for travel
| to/from your destination, as that's quite often a different
| time zone for international travel. Don't want to miss your
| flight...
| Fervicus wrote:
| Just a heads up. The app doesn't load if WebGL is disabled.
| flashblaze wrote:
| I'm unable to resend the verification code. Can you allow to do
| it?
| suhas_rnd wrote:
| Friend (co-worker) had a similar ideas around travel management
| and he built this.
|
| Fully open sourced
| https://github.com/CopilotKit/CopilotKit/tree/main/examples/...
|
| In case you find it useful.
|
| https://examples-coagents-ai-travel-app-git-main-copilot-kit...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Schedule activities with precise times and locations.
|
| There's nothing I hate more than needing to be at a precise
| location at a precise time when I'm on vacation! (After all, it
| is a vacation.)
| eptcyka wrote:
| I empathise with this, but I am torn in half by the opposing
| hatred for regretting not doing a thing or visiting a place
| that I can only do when on holiday.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Well, everything in moderation! My comment was more a
| reaction to some peoples' tendency to over-plan and over-book
| to the minute.
| gorbachev wrote:
| I used to be like this, but then my family grew to a size that
| we can't just go and walk in a restaurant and expect to have a
| table without a 60 minute wait. Traveling with a large family
| requires quite a bit more planning than just hopping on a
| random flight to a random country by yourself for two days.
| joeguilmette wrote:
| I travel a lot. A lot. My humble suggestion would be to build
| this for you and not try at all to even try to get others to use
| it.
|
| If you're going for PMF and traction... It needs to have all
| sorts of Nikita Bier onboarding juice, remove all barriers and
| friction for not only the person setting this up but most
| importantly their companions. Time to first usefulness is
| currently minutes. It needs to be seconds. And then layers of
| social sharing work so that the content this app generates is
| stuff that will be easily shareable on Instagram. And then layers
| of contact adding stuff for vitality.
|
| Then your next problem is people don't go on trips that often, so
| at best your users can only use it in spurts a few times a year.
|
| And your reward for all of that is then figuring out how to get
| money out of these users. Ads?
|
| None of that should be bad news. It's good news. The hard truth
| is this is not a marketable piece of software. It's a classic
| tarpit.
|
| You've clearly built something that YOU love and are passionate
| about. That's awesome. Keep building it, and get that little
| burst of dopamine when you add a feature that you love that is
| perfectly designed for exactly 1 user, the only one who matters.
|
| And then when a profitable idea pops into your head you know what
| it will take to bring it to life. And if it's a truly great idea,
| one that helps your users make money, it wont need any of the
| soul crushing growth hacks described above, people will beg you
| to use it and put up with all manner of warts and bugs because it
| helps them make money.
| naowal wrote:
| Right in time for the summer!
| reconnecting wrote:
| First of all, it is very interesting to see how others expect to
| plan their vacation.
|
| Previously, I had made a travel app for myself, however, it was
| different. The main feature was around the map and locations,
| with a necessary list of some POIs. When I was in the city, I
| used it to see if there was something interesting that I had pre-
| scouted not far from my location.
|
| From the technical side, I took a look into the CSS and was
| surprised. Some of the CSS I could not even understand (like
| below), and there were thousands of different colours used
| hundreds of times. Not sure if it was by design.
|
| grid-template-rows: [header]50px [macroplan]min-content
| [accommodation]min-content [t0000]var(--row-minute-narrow-height)
| [te0000 t0001]var(--row-minute-narrow-height) [te0001
| t0002]var(--row-minute-narrow-height) ... in loop
| fakedang wrote:
| This is funny (in a good way) because there's a YC company that
| actually does the same: https://www.flowtrip.app/
| davl3232 wrote:
| I love this. In the past I've used Airtable, but not having a map
| made things messier for me.
| ognarb wrote:
| Another open source app with a bit of similar goal:
| https://apps.kde.org/itinerary/
|
| The collaboration part is not that developed (but does exist
| based on Matrix as decentralized and end to end encrypted
| storage). That works very well is ticket extraction for hotels,
| train or flight + search for connection using public transport
| APIs.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm involved with that app
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