Trip Planning | AI for Real Life

Itinerary, packing list, restaurants, and the morning-of script.

Everything you'd otherwise have in a Google Doc, a saved map list, a Notes app, and your head — Cowork holds it for the trip. Family Manager already knows your kids' ages, food preferences, dietary stuff, and family rules. The Event Reference from the last lesson knows the trip-specific details. Together that's enough context for Cowork to build the four things you actually need: the itinerary, the packing list, the food/restaurant scouting, and the morning-of departure script.

The itinerary + the kid-friendly considerations.

Day-by-day plan with kid-aware filtering. Cowork pulls from your Family Factsheet (in Family Manager) and the Event Reference to know who's coming and what they'll engage with.

One way to ask:

Sample — itinerary build

Build me a day-by-day itinerary for this trip. Use my Event Reference for dates and location, and my Family Factsheet for the kids' ages and what they'd engage with versus what would be a slog. For each day: what we're doing, approximate timing, kid-friendly considerations (their ages, what they'd love or hate). Include a couple of "rainy day" backup options for the days where weather might kill the plan. Don't overpack the schedule — leave breathing room. Save as Itinerary.md.

Restaurant and food scouting.

Run this either upfront for the whole trip, or day-by-day as you go.

Sample — restaurant scouting

For each day of the itinerary, suggest two or three family-friendly restaurant options for dinner near where we'll be. Match what my kids actually eat — pull from their preferences in the Family Factsheet. Give me rough price range, what makes each one work for our family, and any notes on reservations or wait times. Save as Restaurants.md in this Project.

The packing list — kid-specific, weather-specific.

The list everyone half-makes and then forgets the one thing that matters. Cowork builds it from what it knows about the trip and your family.

One way to ask:

Sample — packing list

Build me a packing list for this trip. Use the Event Reference for dates, location, and weather expectations. Tailor by person — a section per kid with their age and anything specific to them (the stuffed animal that has to come, the inhaler, the swim goggles, the kid who only sleeps with that particular pillow). A section for me and a section for [my partner if relevant]. A section for family-shared items (sunscreen, chargers, first aid, snacks). Format with checkable boxes so I can use it as I pack. Flag anything that's easy to forget specifically because it's not part of normal life — passports, the pet's medication, the booster seat for a kid who's usually too big but might still need one in a rental car. Save as Packing-List.md.

Print it the night before.

The packing list is one of the few things that works better on paper than on a screen — you can actually check things off as you pack and lay it on the bed next to the suitcase. Tell Cowork: "reformat Packing-List.md as print-friendly HTML with bigger checkboxes and clear section breaks." Open the HTML in your browser, print.

The morning-of departure script.

The morning you leave on a trip, you're running on coffee and adrenaline, kids are asking the same question four times, you can't remember if you packed the chargers, and there's a small voice in your head that's certain you're forgetting something. The morning-of script puts that brain on paper (or in your phone) so you can stop trying to hold it.

One way to ask:

Sample — morning-of script

Build me a morning-of departure script for the day we leave on this trip. Cover: - A wake-up-to-departure timeline (work backwards from when we need to leave): when to wake the kids, when breakfast happens, when each loading task happens. - The easy-to-forget house things: turn off the thermostat (or set to away), check all doors are locked, take out the trash, water the plants, unplug whatever I usually unplug, garage door closed. - The kid-handoff stuff: dog dropped at sitter (timing), neighbor notified, anything else that involves another person and a clock. - The loading order: what goes in the car first, what goes last, who's responsible for what. - The "last sweep" — what to walk through the house and check 10 minutes before pulling out (kids' rooms for forgotten lovies, kitchen for the perishables, bathroom for the prescriptions). - The "before you leave the driveway" final check: do we have the passports / IDs, did everyone use the bathroom, is the leash in the car, is the GPS pointed at the right place. Save as Morning-Of-Script.md. Also save a printable version called Morning-Of-Script-Print.md formatted for letter-size paper with bigger text — readable from across the kitchen.

How to use it on the day.

Print version — tape it to the fridge the night before. Cross off items as you do them.
On your phone — open Morning-Of-Script.md in any reader app or in Cowork; tap through the sections as you go.
Voice-read it from regular Claude chat — if your hands are busy and you want it read to you, paste the script into a fresh Claude chat (not Cowork — voice mode lives in chat), turn on voice mode, and ask Claude to read it aloud while you're loading the car. Hands-free morning-of script.

Next: Holidays & Hosting.

Same temporary-Project pattern, applied to the other kind of big week — the one where everyone comes to you instead of you going somewhere.

Continue to Holidays & Hosting →