TravelCAN I VIBECODE
Going?
BUILD FIRST
- A non-sensitive or read-only version of the core experience
- A manual review step wherever correctness or trust matters
- A narrow companion tool that removes a real piece of work
LEAVE FOR LATER
- Regulated decisions, payments, or irreversible actions
- Claims of correctness, compliance, or uptime that the MVP cannot support
- Sensitive integrations until security, support, and auditability are ready
RESEARCH NOTES
What this tool actually does.
Going (formerly Scott's Cheap Flights) is a flight-deal alert subscription service launched in 2015 by Scott Keyes and rebranded to Going in 2023. It combines human flight experts with software to find 'mistake fares' and significant price drops (typically 40–90% off normal prices) for routes from user-selected US departure airports. Members receive curated deal alerts via email and push notification, then click through to book directly with airlines or booking engines—Going itself is not a booking site. The app includes 'My Trips' price tracking for specific dates, staff-picked deals, a 'spin the globe' destination browser covering 900+ airports/cities, and a notification center with badges. The free tier offers limited alerts, while Premium membership (about $49/year) adds domestic+international deals and custom alerts. The company reports over 2 million travelers and average member sa
RESEARCHED BUILD PROMPT
Give this to your coding agent.
Build a focused replacement for Going, the flight-deal alert membership service (formerly Scott's Cheap Flights). The core workflow: a user registers with their preferred departure airports and membership tier, receives curated notifications about unusually cheap flights (including possible mistake fares), can optionally enter specific trip dates to get price-drop alerts for that itinerary, and clicks a link to book the deal directly on the airline/OTA site. Implement a backend that ingests fare data from a public flight API (e.g., Google Flights/Amadeus/Skyscanner) and applies heuristics to flag deals: compare current fare to typical route median, require a minimum discount (e.g., 40% below median) and reasonable quality (no absurd 30-hour layovers, no basic-economy traps unless clearly labeled). Store user profiles, departure airports, alert preferences, and tracked trips. Deliver notifications via email (SMTP) and optional web push; the web app must have an admin queue for 'human expert' review and manual publishing of deals, plus a public-facing feed of published deals with the ability to filter by airport and region. User-facing requirements: signup/login, airport selector, deal cards showing route, price, dates, discount %, booking link, and a 'My Trips' page for monitoring specific itineraries. Technical suggestions: Node.js/Express or Python/FastAPI backend, PostgreSQL, React frontend for the dashboard, a simple Redis queue for deal detection jobs, and Resend/SendGrid for transactional email. Do not copy Going's brand, name, logo, colors, or layout. Deliberately out-of-scope: direct booking/payment processing, mobile app, airline loyalty integration, social/sharing features, and any travel-agent services. Write a README with setup instructions, environment variables, external API credentials, cron job details for fare scans, and important limitations (fare data latency, API rate limits, legal considerations around displaying third-party fares, and the fact that mistake fares are unreliable and can be canceled by airlines). The replacement should be a distinct product called something new, and must be designed to demo the end-to-end alerting workflow with seeded sample data.