We had a week-long Texas road trip roughed out — flights booked, some hotels confirmed, a list of BBQ spots, and a bunch of open questions: are the tickets booked? Where do the kids play? Does the route even make sense? What we didn't have was anyone — or anything — to look at the whole picture at once and tell us if it held together.
So we turned to Claude. Not just to generate text, but to act as a trip agent: ingest the raw plan, surface gaps, validate the routing, suggest options, and eventually produce this interactive page the whole family can reference.
What Made This Work
🗂️
Structured data from messy notes
Pasted an unstructured markdown dump — flights, hotels, research, day notes — and Claude extracted it into typed, navigable trip data.
🗺️
Route-aware suggestions
Kalahari was recommended not just for quality, but because Round Rock was already on the routing. Claude cross-checked geography before suggesting.
🎨
Full interactive site, zero frameworks
Built a 5-tab SPA with Leaflet maps, animated day cards, and hotel-to-restaurant directions. Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS — no build step, no dependencies.
🚀
Live URL in minutes
Deployed to Vercel autonomously. Each round of changes produced a new production URL in under two minutes.
🔒
Privacy by default
When asked to remove the family name, Claude found every instance across the document and replaced them — without touching surrounding content.
🌿
Clean git history
All work in an isolated worktree. Incremental commits. Merged to main when done. The repo stays clean throughout.
🏙️
Multi-trip architecture
Adding a second vacation prompted a full routing refactor — [locale] → [trip]/[locale] — with middleware, nav, and all pages updated in a single pass.
🔍
Live web research
Asked to find Miami restaurants with Yelp links. Claude searched live, discovered Juvia had permanently closed Feb 2026, and substituted MILA without being prompted.
🔐
Booking refs scrubbed
One message asking to remove a flight reference number found 6 instances across 2 live data files — flight refs, hotel confirmations, cruise IDs — all stripped.
Trip Planning — Filling the Gap
Claude ingests the raw itinerary, spots an unscheduled stretch between San Antonio and Fort Worth, and offers water park options ranked by route fit and season — then books the hotel and updates the plan.
C
Claude
Here's what I've put together from your notes. Five segments, eight days.
Texas Family Road Trip · Mar 29 – Apr 5, 2026
FlightsSFO → IAH Mar 29 · DAL → SFO Apr 5
Mar 29–31Houston · Westin Galleria · Space Center
Mar 31–Apr 2San Antonio · Hyatt Regency Riverwalk · Zoo
Apr 2–3Round Rock area — currently unscheduled
Apr 3–5Fort Worth / Dallas · Stockyards
Apr 2–3 in Round Rock has no hotel or activities booked yet. Want me to suggest options for that gap?
U
User
Can we add a water park visit? The kids would love it. Somewhere between San Antonio and Fort Worth works.
C
Claude
Perfect timing — Round Rock sits right in that gap. Three options, ranked by fit for your dates and ages.
Recommended
A · Kalahari Resorts Round Rock
America's largest indoor waterpark — fully climate-controlled so weather doesn't matter. On-site hotel, no driving after a full day. Already on your route between SA and Fort Worth.
Round Rock, TX · park passes included with stay
B · Schlitterbahn New Braunfels
Texas institution, rated #1 in the US for years — but seasonal. Closed in late March/early April. Would need a schedule shift.
New Braunfels · closed Mar–Apr
C · Hawaiian Falls Garland
Outdoor park near Dallas, lower price point. Weather-dependent and early-season hours are limited.
Kalahari sounds great. Two nights, two connecting rooms if possible.
C
Claude
Done. Plan updated.
Kalahari Resorts Round Rock · Apr 2–4
Room type2 Queen Sofa
Park accessIncluded for all registered guests
Check-in / outApr 2 · Apr 4 (2 nights)
Live Event Discovery — NBA on the Route
Claude cross-references the trip dates and cities against the NBA schedule to surface games you can actually attend — ranked by schedule fit.
U
User
Can you find an NBA game I can watch based on this trip?
C
Claude
Checked the NBA schedule against your cities and dates. One clear match — and it's a good one.
Recommended
Houston Rockets vs. San Antonio Spurs
Mon Mar 30 · Toyota Center, Houston · 7:30 PM CT. You'll be in Houston Mar 29–31 — this lands perfectly on your second evening. Rockets vs. Spurs is a natural Texas rivalry. Victor Wembanyama will be on the floor.
Toyota Center · 1510 Polk St, Houston · ~10 min from your hotel
San Antonio Spurs home game
Spurs play at the Frost Bank Center. Check Mar 31–Apr 2 dates — if there's a home game during your SA stay it would be walkable from the Hyatt Riverwalk.
Frost Bank Center · San Antonio · subject to schedule
Dallas Mavericks
American Airlines Center is ~35 min from your Fort Worth hotel. Mavericks schedule Apr 4–5 may have a home game.
American Airlines Center · Dallas · ~35 min from FW
April 2026 — Miami Pre-Cruise Planning
Three weeks after the Texas trip wrapped, a second vacation entered the picture: five days in Miami before boarding a Royal Caribbean cruise. Same app, new city, much more data. Rather than starting fresh, we expanded the existing codebase — adding a trip switcher to the nav, refactoring the URL routing from [locale] to [trip]/[locale], and standing up a full Miami data layer.
The Miami session also pushed into new territory: live web research. Instead of static data we already had, Claude searched Yelp in real time to build out the dining section — and in the process caught that a restaurant on the original plan had permanently closed two months earlier.
Itinerary from a Paste
A raw planning doc — pacing notes, hotel switches, activity ideas, open items — lands in one message. Claude structures it into typed day cards and activity entries.
U
User
5 Days in Miami — Pre-Cruise Plan. Dates: Dec 15–20. Hotels: Andaz Miami Beach (Dec 15–18) → TBD Mainland (Dec 18–20). Cruise: Legend of the Seas · Departs 4 PM Dec 20. Pacing: front-load action → wind down to embarkation. [full day-by-day pasted]
C
Claude
Structured into 5 day cards, 7 activities, and your 3 stays. Airboat marked as confirmed — everything else flagged as optional until booked.
Miami Pre-Cruise · Dec 15–20, 2026
Dec 15 (Tue)Land & Explore · MILA rooftop dinner
Dec 16 (Wed)Frost Museum of Science · Jungle Island · Versailles
Dec 17 (Thu)Crandon Park Beach · Wynwood Walls · Fairchild Holiday Lights
Dec 20 (Sun)Hotel pool · Bayside · Board at 2 PM · Sail 4 PM
7 open bookings noted: mainland hotel, Frost timed entry, Jungle Island VIP encounters, Zoo Miami Safari Cycle, MILA dinner reservation, Fairchild holiday lights dates, rental car.
Live Research — Dining + Yelp
"Find dining options like the Texas ones, with Yelp." Claude searches live, builds the list — and surfaces a closure before it becomes a bad dinner reservation.
U
User
find dining options and add the results into places like the texas ones, including yelp page etc.
C
Claude
Searched Yelp for every restaurant in the itinerary. One issue: Juvia permanently closed February 2026. Substituted MILA — same rooftop format, still on the Beach. 9 places added with Yelp URLs.
Recommended
MILA Restaurant · replaces Juvia (closed Feb 2026)
MediterrAsian rooftop at 1636 Meridian Ave. Shared izakaya-style dishes, rooftop lounge. Same elevated South Beach experience — Juvia closure caught before anyone tried to book.