RUNWAY

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  LOGO

Inspiration

Travel is one of the most stressful human experiences, and yet in 2026, there is still no single app that handles the full journey. You check flights on one app, hotels on another, visa requirements on a government website, and pray your group WhatsApp keeps everyone coordinated. I built RUNWAY because I personally felt this pain. The idea was simple: what if your phone was as prepared for your trip as you were? Beyond solving a personal pain point, I wanted to challenge myself to see exactly how far AI could build with nothing but well-crafted prompts. No developer. No code editor. No technical background. Just a clear vision, structured thinking, and conversations with MeDo. RUNWAY is my answer to the question: how much can one person build with AI alone?

What it does

RUNWAY is a premium all-in-one travel intelligence app that guards your entire journey from planning to landing.

• Trip Management — Create trips with flight tracking, hotel details, and a scrollable timeline: Packing → Airport → Flight → Landing → Hotel Check-in, each with checkboxes and live flight status badges
• Immigration & Documents — Auto-generated document checklists for 20+ countries, passport expiry warnings, and a 4-stage visa tracker (Not Applied → Applied → Approved → Received)
• Smart Notifications — Real-time alerts for check-in windows, boarding, gate changes, deal price drops, and a welcome landing message with local weather
• Group Travel — Invite your travel companions via link, track everyone's check-in status in real time, and coordinate via built-in group chat
• Explore & Book — Search flights and hotels, get redirected to Google Flights and Booking.com with details pre-filled, then return to RUNWAY to auto-create your trip with one tap
• Deals — Spontaneous Travel mode lets you enter a budget and departure city to discover where you can fly right now
• AI Itinerary Builder — Enter a destination, number of days, and travel vibe (Relaxed, Foodie, Adventurous, Nightlife) and get a full day-by-day plan with places, times, and budget estimates powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash
• RAI (RUNWAY AI) — A floating AI travel assistant on every screen that answers visa questions, generates packing lists, finds emergency numbers, and checks baggage allowances in real time
• Crowdsourced Airport Intel — After check-in, users complete a 4-question micro-survey about queue times and airport experience. This data feeds a live Airport Intel banner visible to all travellers at that airport in real time; like Waze, but for airports

How we built it

RUNWAY was built entirely using MeDo with zero lines of code written manually. I structured the build as a conversation, describing each feature clearly and iterating screen by screen using Deep Build mode. My prompting approach:

• Started with the app foundation and design system first (dark premium UI, black background, electric blue accents)
• Built one tab at a time, always referencing the existing design to maintain consistency
• Used follow-up prompts to fix errors, refine UX, and add edge cases like empty states and error handling
• Let MeDo's auto-fix feature resolve runtime errors without losing credits MeDo connected RUNWAY to Supabase automatically for all data persistence; trips, documents, group travel status, notification history, and crowdsourced survey responses all live in a real database. The AI features (RAI assistant and AI Itinerary Builder) are powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash streaming, integrated by MeDo without any manual API setup.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was the deals and booking integration. Real-time flight pricing requires commercial API agreements with Amadeus or Booking.com that aren't available to independent developers overnight. After researching the options honestly, I designed RUNWAY around an affiliate model , curated destinations with fare labels linking to Google Flights and Booking.com with details pre-filled. This mirrors how Kayak and Google Travel operate and is fully honest with users. A secondary challenge was managing credits efficiently across 18 versions while keeping the UI consistent. I solved this by always referencing the design system in every prompt and using MeDo's free auto-fix feature for runtime errors.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Built a fully functional, deployed, premium travel app in under 14 days with no coding experience
• 18 versions, zero manual code, real Supabase backend
• The crowdsourced Airport Intel feature ,turning every RUNWAY user into a real-time data contributor
• RAI assistant that genuinely answers complex travel questions instantly
• A UI that looks and feels like a funded startup product

What we learned

I learned that the quality of your prompts determines the quality of your product. Vague prompts produce vague results. Describing the exact UI, the exact user flow, and the exact data behaviour in each prompt produced professional output every time. I also learned that no-code doesn't mean no thinking , product decisions, UX logic, and business model thinking still matter enormously. MeDo handles the code. You still have to know what to build and why. Most importantly, I proved that with the right prompts and a clear product vision, one non-technical person can build something that looks and functions like a fully-funded startup product. AI doesn't replace the builder. It removes the barrier to building.

What's next for RUNWAY

• Native booking — Integrate Amadeus and Stripe for in-app flight and hotel booking without leaving RUNWAY
• Live flight tracking — Real-time gate, delay, and baggage carousel data via FlightAware API
• Airport Intel expansion — More crowdsourced data points: security queue times, lounge availability, terminal food recommendations
• Mobile app — iOS and Android native apps with push notifications
• Immigration AI — Deeper visa requirement intelligence with application form assistance and appointment reminders

Built With

• medo