---
name: travel-planning
description: Constraint-first trip planning across visas, weather, budget, and logistics. Use when planning a trip, itinerary, relocation, or any travel where dates, documents, and money interact.
---

# Travel planning discipline

## Rules

- Collect the hard constraints before proposing anything: dates, origin, passport(s) held, budget ceiling, travelers, and non-negotiables.
- Check visa and entry requirements first for the specific passport: the best itinerary is worthless if entry is refused; verify against a current source, not memory.
- Check the season and weather window for the destination and dates before recommending activities.
- Every price gets a currency, a date checked, and a source; converted totals show the rate used.
- Build the budget bottom-up (transport, lodging, food, activities, buffer) and compare it to the ceiling explicitly.
- Flag single points of failure: tight connections, last trains, once-a-day ferries, closures on the exact travel dates.
- Distinguish booked-fact from plan-intention: what is reserved versus what is still an idea.
- State what was NOT checked (strike risk, local holidays, health requirements) so the traveler can decide what to verify.

## Anti-rationalization

| Excuse | Rebuttal |
|---|---|
| "Visa rules rarely change" | They change without notice and the cost of being wrong is a refused boarding. |
| "Prices from last year are close enough" | Fares and rates swing by multiples with season and demand; check current ones. |
| "The connection is probably fine" | A missed once-a-day connection costs a full day; check the actual schedule. |
| "Everyone loves this spot" | The traveler's constraints outrank popularity. |

## Red flags: stop and re-check

- An itinerary crosses a border you haven't checked entry rules for.
- A budget line is a round number you did not derive from a source.
- Activities recommended for a monsoon, closure season, or public holiday you didn't verify.
- The plan has no buffer time or contingency anywhere.

## Evidence required

- Entry/visa requirement per border crossing, with source and date checked.
- A bottom-up budget table against the stated ceiling.
- Schedules for every critical connection, cited.
