TravelCAN I VIBECODE
Seats.aero?
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.
Seats.aero is a web-based award travel search engine that finds flights bookable with frequent-flyer miles across major airline alliances and programs. It continuously refreshes award availability in the background so results appear instantly. Two core tools: Explore shows all available award flights from a chosen mileage program across regions/cabins, sortable by date and cabin, with airport-code click filters and deeplinks to book on the airline; Search shows all programs at once for a specific route/date, supports multiple origin/destination airports and multi-city codes (e.g., TYO, USA), and filters by airline, cabin, number of seats, and direct flights. Free tier covers departures within ~2 months; Pro ($9.99/month) unlocks up to a year of availability, live searches on any route, advanced filters, unlimited alerts, SMS alerts, and a JSON API. Alerts feature lets users create unlimi
RESEARCHED BUILD PROMPT
Give this to your coding agent.
Build a focused replacement for Seats.aero, an award-travel availability search engine. Core workflow: (1) Explore view — pick a mileage program and origin/destination regions, see all award flights across cabins, sort by date/cabin, click an airport code to filter, and get a deeplink to book on the airline. (2) Search view — pick a route and date, see availability across all programs at once, with multi-airport origins/destinations and multi-city codes (e.g., TYO, USA), plus filters for airline, cabin, seat count, and direct flights. (3) Alerts — create unlimited availability alerts for a route/date/cabin and get notified when seats appear. (4) A JSON API for programmatic availability queries. User-facing requirements: instant results from pre-cached availability, free tier limited to ~2 months out, paid tier unlocking ~1 year, live searches, advanced filters, and alerts. Technical approach: a backend that periodically polls airline/program award-availability sources into a searchable cache, a REST/JSON API over that cache, and a responsive web frontend with Explore/Search/Alerts views; use a relational store for routes/availability and a job scheduler for background refreshes. Do NOT copy the Seats.aero brand, logo, proprietary assets, or UI layout; build an original interface and name. Deliberately out of scope: actual booking/payment, real airline API integrations (use mock/simulated availability data), seat maps, fare-class internals, and multi-user billing. Include a README with setup steps, how the mock availability data is generated, and important limitations (simulated data, no real award inventory, no live airline connections).