Waypoint

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Inspiration

Travel planning is overwhelming, with too many tabs, too many decisions, and no easy way to match a trip to your personal travel style. We wanted something that feels like talking to a friend who just knows what you like.

What it does

Waypoint is an AI travel planner that learns your preferences and builds complete, dynamic itineraries. You tell it your vibe, interests, pace, and budget—Waypoint finds flights, stays, and experiences, then organizes your days into a personalized trip plan that updates as your plans change.

How we built it

We used generative AI (specifically Claude Haiku 3.5 and Groq) for itinerary reasoning and natural conversation. We integrated Serp APIs for flights, hotels, and events, stored trip context in structured memory, and created an adaptive planning pipeline that refines the itinerary based on new user input. The frontend offers a clean chat-style interface to guide planning in real time.

Challenges we ran into

Handling edge cases that gives malformed data that causes the AI to complain
Getting the AI to respect budget + time constraints consistently
Avoiding hallucinated attractions and ensuring real recommendations
Designing conversations that feel natural and not like forms

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a fully working end-to-end travel planning agent in a weekend
Created a fluid feedback loop where the trip updates instantly based on changes

What we learned

Generative AI is strongest when given structure, memory, constraints, and context. Otherwise it's straight up annoying.
Conversations are a powerful UI when paired with real planning logic