A self-hosted, real-time collaborative travel planner — with maps, budgets, packing lists, a journal, and AI built in.

     
 

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What you get

See all features

Most of what follows is an addon an admin switches on or off. Lists, Costs, Documents, Collab, Vacay and Atlas ship on; Journey, Collections, MCP, AI Parsing and AirTrail ship off and are marked below.

🧭 Planning Day plans: drag places between days and reorder inside a day, with undo. Notes and bookings drag the same way, and a map marker drops straight onto a day Maps: Leaflet, Mapbox GL or MapLibre GL (OpenFreeMap, no token), with clustering, photo markers and route lines. 3D buildings and terrain are Mapbox only Place search: Google Places when a key is set (photos, ratings, opening hours), otherwise OpenStreetMap with no key Place enrichment: descriptions, facts, hours and photo candidates from OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons POI explore: pull OpenStreetMap POIs by category for the current viewport over Overpass Import: shared Google Maps and Naver Maps lists, plus GPX, KML and KMZ files Export: GPX of a trip's places and tracks, and an ICS feed per trip or across all of them Routes: auto-sort a day (nearest neighbour then 2-opt, locked stops and hotel anchors stay put), driving, walking or cycling profiles over OSRM, then open it in Google Maps or CoMaps Public transport: door-to-door itineraries over Transitous Weather: 16-day forecast from Open-Meteo, no key. Dates outside that window read the archive for the same date instead Day notes: markdown body with an icon and a colour, reordered by drag and drop or moved to another day Trip dates: move a trip and the days re-date themselves, either dragging the bookings along or re-anchoring them. Trips also copy and archive	🧳 Bookings and money Reservations: 16 booking types with status, confirmation code, travellers and attached files Flights and trains: several legs with stopovers, per-leg times and endpoint timezones, against 4,045 bundled airports so local times resolve without a key Accommodation: a stay spans a range of days with a check-in window, and shows on every night it covers Booking import: EML, PDF, PKPass, HTML and TXT confirmations through KItinerary. Needs the kitinerary-extractor binary, which ships in the Docker image AirTrail (off by default): link a self-hosted AirTrail instance to import flights as reservations and keep them in sync Costs: split expenses in integer cents with equal or custom shares, several payers per expense, settle-up suggestions, a settlement log, and CSV export Currencies: a currency per expense with the rate frozen at entry. Rates come from Frankfurter, no key Packing lists: categories, admin-managed templates, assignees, three visibility tiers, and a packed-of-total line. Bags with weight roll-up are a separate admin switch, off by default To-dos: assignee, due date, priority, and a reminder before one falls due Files: attach to a trip, place, day entry or reservation. 50 MB each, 500 MB for video, with trash and restore PDF export: cover page, place photos, day notes, bookings and costs, with an optional page break per day
👥 Collaboration Real-time sync (WebSocket): edits land live for everyone who has that trip open Members: add by email or username, hand ownership to someone else, or add guests who have no login at all Permissions: an admin maps each of 16 trip actions to admin, trip owner, trip member or everybody Invite links: one reusable link per trip with an optional expiry. Admins can also issue signup invites with a use limit that drop the new account straight into a trip Public share: a read-only trip page anyone can open without an account Collab: group chat with replies, reactions and link previews, shared notes with attachments, polls, and a What's Next list of upcoming activities. Each of the four switches on its own 📔 Journal, Atlas and Vacay Journey (off by default): dated entries with story, mood, weather and tags, photos and video from uploads or a linked Immich or Synology Photos library, map views, co-authors, and a public share link Atlas: mark countries and sub-national regions visited on geoBoundaries outlines, plus a bucket list, travel stats and a consecutive-years-travelled count Vacay: leave calendar with half days, public holidays from date.nager.at, school holiday overlays for 16 European countries, carry-over between years, and joint or read-only sharing of a plan Collections (off by default): a place library outside any trip, with labels, ratings, a custom image per place, copy-into-a-trip, and sharing by invite	🧩 Plugins Third-party plugins: install from the TREK registry or sideload a zip, switch on per instance, with their own pages under /plugins/<id> Sandboxed: one child process per plugin, 63 grantable permissions, an admin-edited outbound host allowlist, memory and RPC caps, and daily caps on AI and notification calls Trust: registry downloads are pinned by sha256 and checked against the author's minisign key. A sideloaded zip is marked unverified, and TREK_PLUGINS_ENABLED=false turns the whole system off Extension points: map markers and layers, place details, day schedules, PDF sections, Atlas layers, journal rows, trip warnings, calendar sources, route profiles and notification channels. Plugin pages run in an opaque-origin iframe SDK: trek-plugin-sdk on npm, with a manifest validator, a mock host, and a dev-link mode that runs a local build against real data 🤖 AI and MCP MCP server (off by default): OAuth 2.1 with mandatory PKCE and dynamic client registration. 199 tools, 30 resources, 4 prompts Scopes: 29 scopes in 14 groups, each one tickable on the consent screen. Tokens are bound to the /mcp resource, and every tool call lands in the audit log Reach: create trips and days, edit places, packing lists, to-dos, costs, reservations, collections and journeys, mark countries visited, all inside the scopes the token holds Prompts: trip-summary, plus packing-list and budget-overview when those addons are on Addon-aware: seven addon gates decide which tools and resources a session sees. Flipping one drops live sessions so the surface re-registers Booking extraction (off by default): read a confirmation with a local Ollama server, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or Anthropic, configured instance-wide or per user
📱 Mobile and offline Installable: iOS and Android straight from the browser, no App Store. Runs standalone without browser chrome, with the status bar tinted per theme Phone layouts: a separate shell below 768px with its own tokens, a bottom bar and safe-area insets. Which items sit in that bar is up to the user Offline reads: the app shell and every route chunk are precached, and trips, places and file blobs live in a per-user IndexedDB store, so a trip opens with no network Offline writes: mutations queue and replay with an X-Idempotency-Key, so a reconnect cannot double-apply. A stale edit is parked for a keep-mine or keep-theirs choice Offline maps: pre-download a trip's raster tiles, and clear them again API responses are never cached by the service worker. They vary per session, so they always come from the network	⚙️ Admin, accounts and security Login methods: password login, password registration, OIDC login, OIDC registration and passkey login each switch on and off on their own. OIDC_ONLY leaves SSO as the only way in SSO (OIDC): one provider by discovery, with PKCE and id_token verification (Authentik, Keycloak, Google and the like) 2FA: TOTP with ten single-use backup codes, and an admin can require it instance-wide Passkeys: WebAuthn login by fingerprint, face, PIN or security key, off until an admin enables it. A passkey also satisfies the 2FA requirement Hardening: per-IP limits on login, password reset and 2FA attempts, a password policy, secrets encrypted at rest and masked on read, and an SSRF guard on every URL you configure Admin panel: users and invites, the permission matrix, packing templates, categories, addons, plugins, API keys, MCP tokens and OAuth sessions, backups, audit log, and GitHub releases Backups: manual or scheduled hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, with retention in days. The zip carries the at-rest key, so a restore can decrypt its own secrets Notifications: a per-user matrix of events against in-app, email (SMTP), webhook and ntfy, plus any channel a plugin registers Appearance: light, dark or follow the OS, seven colour schemes plus a custom accent, transparency, compact density, reduce motion, and text size per tier 23 languages: en, de, es, fr, it, nl, hu, ru, zh, zh-TW, pl, cs, ar (right to left), br, id, tr, ja, ko, uk, gr, sv, vi, ca In-app help: the wiki ships inside the image and is served from disk at /help, so the docs match the version you are running

AI usage

We use LLM-assisted coding tools across parts of this codebase. Nothing ships that a maintainer has not read and understood: every change goes through a pull request, is reviewed and tested, and has a human who can answer for it. "The AI wrote that" is not an answer any of us would accept from ourselves.

See How we use AI in TREK for the details.

Get started in 30 seconds

ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32) docker run -d -p 3000:3000 \
  -e ENCRYPTION_KEY=$ENCRYPTION_KEY \
  -v ./data:/app/data -v ./uploads:/app/uploads mauriceboe/trek

Open http://localhost:3000. On first boot TREK seeds an admin account — if you set ADMIN_EMAIL/ADMIN_PASSWORD those are used, otherwise the credentials are printed to the container log (docker logs trek).

Docker Compose  ·  Helm / Kubernetes  ·  Install as PWA  ·  Reverse Proxy

Tech stack

Real-time sync via WebSocket (ws). Backend on NestJS 11. State with Zustand. Auth via JWT + OAuth 2.1 + OIDC + Passkeys (WebAuthn) + TOTP MFA. Weather via Open-Meteo (no key required). Maps with Leaflet and Mapbox GL.

Docker Compose (production)

Full compose example with secure defaults

services:
  app:
    image: mauriceboe/trek:latest
    container_name: trek
    read_only: true
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    cap_drop:
      - ALL
    cap_add:
      - CHOWN
      - SETUID
      - SETGID
    tmpfs:
      - /tmp:noexec,nosuid,size=64m
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - NODE_ENV=production
      - PORT=3000
      - ENCRYPTION_KEY=${ENCRYPTION_KEY:-}   # generate with: openssl rand -hex 32
      - TZ=${TZ:-UTC}
      - LOG_LEVEL=${LOG_LEVEL:-info}
      - ALLOWED_ORIGINS=${ALLOWED_ORIGINS:-}
      - APP_URL=${APP_URL:-}                 # required for OIDC + email links
      # - FORCE_HTTPS=true                   # behind a TLS-terminating proxy
      # - TRUST_PROXY=1
      # - OIDC_ISSUER=https://auth.example.com
      # - OIDC_CLIENT_ID=trek
      # - OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=supersecret
      # - OIDC_DISPLAY_NAME=SSO
      # - OIDC_ADMIN_CLAIM=groups
      # - OIDC_ADMIN_VALUE=app-trek-admins
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
      - ./uploads:/app/uploads
    restart: unless-stopped
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "wget", "-qO-", "http://localhost:3000/api/health"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 15s

Then:

docker compose up -d

HTTPS notes: FORCE_HTTPS=true is optional — it adds a 301 redirect, HSTS, CSP upgrade-insecure-requests, and forces the secure cookie flag. Only use it behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy. TRUST_PROXY=1 tells the server how many proxies sit in front so real client IPs and X-Forwarded-Proto work.

Helm (Kubernetes)

helm repo add trek https://chart.liketrek.com
helm repo update
helm install trek trek/trek

See charts/README.md for values.

Install as App (PWA)

TREK works as a Progressive Web App — no App Store needed.

1. Open TREK in the browser (HTTPS required)
2. iOS: Share ▸ Add to Home Screen
3. Android: Menu ▸ Install app (or Add to Home Screen)

TREK then launches fullscreen with its own icon, just like a native app.

Updating

Docker Compose:

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Docker run — reuse the original volume paths:

docker pull mauriceboe/trek
docker rm -f trek
docker run -d --name trek -p 3000:3000 -v ./data:/app/data -v ./uploads:/app/uploads --restart unless-stopped mauriceboe/trek

Not sure which paths you used? docker inspect trek --format '{{json .Mounts}}' before removing the container.

Your data stays in the mounted data and uploads volumes — updates never touch it.

Important

Mount only the data and uploads directories — -v ./data:/app/data -v ./uploads:/app/uploads. Never mount a volume at /app. Doing so hides the application code shipped in the image and the container fails to start with Cannot find module 'tsconfig-paths/register'. If you previously mounted /app, switch to the two mounts above; your data in data/ and uploads/ is preserved.

Rotating the Encryption Key

If you need to rotate ENCRYPTION_KEY (e.g. upgrading from a version that derived encryption from JWT_SECRET):

docker exec -it trek node --import tsx scripts/migrate-encryption.ts

The script creates a timestamped DB backup before making changes and prompts for old + new keys (input is not echoed).

Reverse Proxy

For production, put TREK behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy. TREK uses WebSockets for real-time sync, so the proxy must support WebSocket upgrades on /ws.

If you use the MCP addon, the proxy must also pass the Mcp-Session-Id header through in both directions on /mcp — Nginx and Caddy do this by default, but a proxy that strips it makes every tool call open a new session instead of reusing one. See the Reverse Proxy wiki page for details.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name trek.yourdomain.com;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name trek.yourdomain.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/ssl/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/privkey.pem;

    # 500 MB covers backup-restore uploads (capped at 500 MB server-side).
    client_max_body_size 500m;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }

    location /ws {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_read_timeout 86400;
    }

    # Only needed if you use the MCP addon. Responses are Server-Sent Events,
    # so buffering must be off or tool results arrive late.
    location /mcp {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_buffering off;
        proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
    }
}

Caddy

trek.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}

Caddy handles TLS and WebSockets automatically.

Environment variables

Note

Variables are validated at startup (fail-fast). An unset or blank variable always falls back to its default, but a variable set to a malformed value (e.g. PORT=abc, SESSION_DURATION=bogus, DEMO_MODE=maybe) aborts boot with a report listing every offending variable. Boolean switches accept true/false, 1/0, on/off and yes/no (any casing).

Full reference

Variable	Description	Default
Core
PORT	Server port	3000
NODE_ENV	Environment (production / development)	production
ENCRYPTION_KEY	At-rest encryption key for stored secrets (API keys, MFA, SMTP, OIDC). Recommended: generate with openssl rand -hex 32. If unset, falls back to data/.jwt_secret (existing installs) or auto-generates a key (fresh installs).	Auto
TZ	Timezone for logs, reminders and cron jobs (e.g. Europe/Berlin)	UTC
LOG_LEVEL	info = concise user actions, debug = verbose details	info
TREK_WIKI_DIR	Where the in-app Help pages (/help) read their content from. TREK ships its wiki and serves it from disk, so Help always matches the version you are running — you should not need to set this. Point it at your own directory to serve custom docs. If the path does not exist, Help falls back to fetching the public GitHub wiki (needs outbound network, and tracks the latest release).	bundled wiki/
TREK_UPLOADS_DIR	Root directory for uploaded files (trip files, journey media, covers, avatars, place images, photo caches). Leave unset to keep the default uploads/ directory next to the server — in Docker that is the /app/uploads volume. Set it to relocate uploads to another disk or mount; the path must be writable by the server.	./uploads
DEFAULT_LANGUAGE	Default language on the login page for users with no saved preference. Browser/OS language is auto-detected first; this is the fallback. Supported: de, en, es, fr, hu, nl, br, cs, pl, ru, zh, zh-TW, it, ar, id, tr, ja, ko, uk, gr	en
ALLOWED_ORIGINS	Comma-separated origins for CORS and email links	same-origin
FORCE_HTTPS	Optional. When true: 301-redirects HTTP to HTTPS, sends HSTS, adds CSP upgrade-insecure-requests, forces the session cookie secure flag. Useful behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy. Requires TRUST_PROXY.	false
HSTS_INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS	When true: adds the includeSubDomains directive to the HSTS header, extending HTTPS enforcement to all subdomains. Only effective when HSTS is active (FORCE_HTTPS=true or NODE_ENV=production). Leave false if you run other services on sibling subdomains over plain HTTP.	false
COOKIE_SECURE	Controls the secure flag on the trek_session cookie. Auto-derived: on when NODE_ENV=production or FORCE_HTTPS=true. Escape hatch: set false to allow session cookies over plain HTTP. Not recommended in production.	auto
SESSION_DURATION	How long a login session stays valid when "Remember me" is unchecked (the default): sets the trek_session JWT exp and issues a browser-session cookie (cleared when the browser closes). Accepts ms-style strings: 1h, 12h, 7d, 30d, 90d. Invalid values warn at startup and fall back to the default.	24h
SESSION_DURATION_REMEMBER	Session length when "Remember me" is ticked at login: a longer-lived JWT plus a persistent trek_session cookie that survives browser restarts. Same format and startup-fallback behaviour as SESSION_DURATION.	30d
TRUST_PROXY	Number of trusted reverse proxies. Tells the server to read client IP from X-Forwarded-For and protocol from X-Forwarded-Proto. Defaults to 1 in production; off in dev unless set.	1
ALLOW_INTERNAL_NETWORK	Allow outbound requests to private/RFC-1918 IPs (e.g. Immich on your LAN). Loopback and link-local addresses remain blocked.	false
APP_URL	Public base URL of this instance (e.g. https://trek.example.com). Required when OIDC is enabled; used as base for email notification links.	—
S3 storage
TREK_S3_ENDPOINT	Full URL of an S3-compatible endpoint (https://s3.example.com:9000). Setting any TREK_S3_* variable makes the four credentials/endpoint/bucket variables required — the server refuses to boot on a partial set. Declares the s3-main storage backend; nothing uses it until a storage.categories / storage.backends setting maps a category to it. Note for self-hosted endpoints (MinIO, Garage): use an IP address or localhost in the URL, or configure the server for virtual-hosted bucket addressing — the client addresses non-IP hostnames as bucket.host.	—
TREK_S3_BUCKET	Bucket name (must exist; the server never creates it).	—
TREK_S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID	Credential. Lives only in your env/compose file — never in the database.	—
TREK_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	Credential.	—
TREK_S3_REGION	Region; arbitrary values accepted for non-AWS endpoints (Cloudflare R2 wants auto).	us-east-1
TREK_S3_KEY_PREFIX	Namespace inside a shared bucket, e.g. trek/prod.	—
TREK_S3_RETRIES	Client retry count (0 disables).	1
TREK_S3_TIMEOUT_MS	Per-request deadline in ms (inactivity-based for large multipart uploads).	30000
OIDC / SSO
OIDC_ISSUER	OpenID Connect provider URL	—
OIDC_CLIENT_ID	OIDC client ID	—
OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET	OIDC client secret	—
OIDC_DISPLAY_NAME	Label shown on the SSO login button	SSO
OIDC_ONLY	Force SSO-only mode: disables password login + registration, regardless of Admin > Settings. The first SSO login becomes admin.	false
OIDC_ADMIN_CLAIM	OIDC claim used to identify admin users	—
OIDC_ADMIN_VALUE	Value of the OIDC claim that grants admin role	—
OIDC_SCOPE	Space-separated OIDC scopes. Fully replaces the default — always include openid email profile.	openid email profile
OIDC_DISCOVERY_URL	Override the auto-constructed OIDC discovery endpoint (e.g. Authentik: .../application/o/trek/.well-known/openid-configuration)	—
Initial setup
ADMIN_EMAIL	Email for the first admin on initial boot. Must be set together with ADMIN_PASSWORD. If either is omitted a random password is printed to the server log. No effect once a user exists.	admin@trek.local
ADMIN_PASSWORD	Password for the first admin on initial boot. Pairs with ADMIN_EMAIL.	random
Other
TREK_MANAGED	Marks the install as centrally administered: the operator owns the configuration, credentials and upgrades, so the instance admin is not offered settings the operator sets. Leave unset when you run TREK yourself.	false
PLACES_API_KEY	Places credential supplied by whoever operates the install. When set, it is used for every lookup and the per-user keys in Admin > Settings are ignored. Leave unset to keep the stored keys.	—
PLACES_API_BASE	Send the Places calls to this origin instead of https://places.googleapis.com (an egress proxy, a cache, a gateway holding the key). Path and query are unchanged, so it has to speak the same API.	—
DEMO_MODE	Enable demo mode (hourly data resets)	false
UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY	Optional Unsplash Access Key for trip-cover and place-image search. Without one, TREK uses Unsplash's unauthenticated endpoint, which some datacenter/VPS IPs are blocked from. Get a free key at unsplash.com/developers. Overrides any per-admin key set in Admin > Settings (where it can also be configured instead).	—
MCP_RATE_LIMIT	Max MCP API requests per user per minute	300
MCP_MAX_SESSION_PER_USER	Max concurrent MCP sessions per user. At the cap, the least-recently-active session is closed to make room	20

Data & Backups

• Database — SQLite, stored in ./data/travel.db
• Uploads — stored in ./uploads/
• Logs — ./data/logs/trek.log (auto-rotated)
• Backups — create and restore via Admin Panel
• Auto-Backups — configurable schedule and retention in Admin Panel

Off-box backups (S3)

You can mirror backups to any S3-compatible store (AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Garage, MinIO — MinIO's community line is discontinued entirely (both the archived Docker Hub repo and quay.io get no further updates); the maintained successor, AIStor, requires a license key, so Garage is the maintained self-host alternative without that requirement). Replica failures are logged and surfaced, never fail the request. Media categories on S3 are functional but unoptimized (every served byte proxies through the server; no HTTP Range on the proxy path). Switching a populated category's backend does not move existing objects. AWS caveat: Object-Lock buckets or checksum-requiring bucket policies reject the server's checksum-less uploads. Running the contract suite against a live MinIO/AIStor is a manual, license-gated procedure — see docker-compose.minio-test.yml's header for the full setup and run steps; it is not part of CI.

To mirror backups, configure the mirror backend via SQL:

INSERT INTO app_settings (key, value) VALUES
 ('storage.backends',   '[{"name":"backup-mirror","type":"mirror","options":{"primary":"backups-local","replicas":["s3-main"]}}]'),
 ('storage.categories', '{"backups":"backup-mirror"}');

Data sources

The Atlas map's country and sub-national (province/county) boundaries come from geoBoundaries (Runfola et al., 2020), licensed CC BY 4.0. See NOTICE.md for full third-party attributions.

License

TREK is AGPL v3. Self-host freely for personal or internal company use. If you modify and offer TREK as a network service to third parties, your modifications must be open-sourced under the same licence.